Modern Paganism, also known as Contemporary Paganism[1] and Neopaganism,[2] is a collective term for new religious movements influenced by or claiming to be derived from the various historical pagan beliefs of pre-modern Europe, North Africa and the Near East. Although they do share similarities, contemporary Pagan religious movements are diverse, and no single set of beliefs, practices or texts are shared by them all.[3] Most academics studying the phenomenon have treated it as a movement of different religions, whereas a minority instead characterise it as a single religion into which different Pagan faiths fit as denominations. Not all members of faiths or beliefs regarded as Neopagan self-identify as "Pagan".

Adherents rely on pre-Christian, folkloric and ethnographic sources to a variety of degrees; many follow a spirituality which they accept as being entirely modern, while others attempt to reconstruct or revive indigenous, ethnic religions as found in historical and folkloric sources as accurately as possible.[4] Academic research has placed the Pagan movement along a spectrum, with Eclecticism on one end and Polytheistic Reconstructionism on the other. Polytheism, animism and pantheism are common features in Pagan theology. Rituals take place in both public and in private domestic settings.

The Pagan relationship with Christianity is often strained. Contemporary Paganism has sometimes been associated with the New Age movement, with scholars highlighting both similarities and differences. From the 1990s onwards, scholars studying the modern Pagan movement have established the academic field of Pagan studies.

There is "considerable disagreement as to the precise definition and proper usage" of the term "modern Paganism".[5] Even within the academic field of Pagan studies, there is no consensus regarding how contemporary Paganism can best be defined.[6] Most scholars describe modern Paganism as a broad array of different religions rather than a singular religion in itself.[7] The category of modern Paganism could be compared to the categories of Abrahamic religion and Dharmic religion in its structure.[8] A second, less common definition found within Pagan studies – where it has been promoted by the religious studies scholars Michael F. Strmiska and Graham Harvey – characterises modern Paganism as a singular religion, into which groups like Wicca, Druidry, and Heathenry fit as denominations.[9] This perspective has been critiqued, given the lack of core commonalities in issues such as theology, cosmology, ethics, afterlife, holy days, or ritual practices within the Pagan movement.[9]

Contemporary Paganism has been defined as "a collection of modern religious, spiritual, and magical traditions that are self-consciously inspired by the pre-Judaic, pre-Christian, and pre-Islamic belief systems of Europe, North Africa, and the Near East."[1] Thus, the view has been expressed that although "a highly diverse phenomenon", there is nevertheless "an identifiable common element" running through the Pagan movement.[1] Strmiska similarly described Paganism as a movement "dedicated to reviving the polytheistic, nature-worshipping pagan religions of pre-Christian Europe and adapting them for the use of people in modern societies."[10] The religious studies scholar Wouter Hanegraaff charactised Paganism as encompassing "all those modern movements which are, first, based on the conviction that what Christianity has traditionally denounced as idolatry and superstition actually represents/represented a profound and meaningful religious worldview and, secondly, that a religious practice based on this worldview can and should be revitalized in our modern world."[11]

Discussing the relationship between the different Pagan religions, religious studies scholars Kaarina Aitamurto and Scott Simpson stated that they were "like siblings who have taken different paths in life but still retain many visible similarities".[12] However, while viewing different forms of Paganism as distinct religions in their own right, there has been much "cross-fertilization" between these different faiths. Accordingly, many groups have exerted an influence on, and in turn have been influenced by, other Pagan religions, thus making clear-cut distinctions between them more difficult for religious studies scholars to make.[13] The various Pagan religions have been academically classified as new religious movements,[14] with the anthropologist Kathryn Rountree describing Paganism as a whole as a "new religious phenomenon".[15] A number of academics, particularly in North America, have considered modern Paganism to be a form of nature religion.[16]

Some practitioners eschew the term "Pagan" altogether, choosing not to define themselves as such, but rather under the more specific name of their religion, like Heathen or Wiccan.[17] This is because the term "Pagan" has its origins in Christian terminology, which the Pagans wish to avoid.[18] Some favor the term "ethnic religion" over "Paganism" – for instance the World Pagan Congress, founded in 1998, soon renamed itself the European Congress of Ethnic Religions – enjoying that term's association with the Greek ethnos and the academic field of ethnology.[19] Within linguistically Slavic areas of Europe, the term "Native Faith" is often favored as a synonym for Paganism, being rendered as Ridnovirstvo in Ukrainian, Rodnoverie in Russian, and Rodzimowierstwo in Polish.[20] Alternately, many practitioners within these regions view "Native Faith" as a category that exists within modern Paganism but which does not encompass all Pagan religions.[21] Other terms sometimes favored by Pagans are "traditional religion", "indigenous religion", "nativist religion", and "reconstructionism".[18]

Various Pagans – including those like Michael York and Prudence Jones who are active in Pagan studies – have argued that, due to similarities in their respective spiritual world-views, the modern Pagan movement can be treated as part of the same global phenomenon as both pre-Christian religion, living indigenous religions, and world religions like Hinduism, Shinto, and Afro-American religions. Further, they have suggested that all of these could be defined under the banner of "paganism" or "Paganism".[22] This approach has been received critically by many specialists in religious studies.[23] Critics have pointing out that such claims would cause problems for analytic scholarship by categorising together belief systems with very significant differences, further noting that the term would instead serve modern Pagan interests by giving the movement the appearance of being far larger on the world stage.[24] Doyle White stated that those modern religions which drew upon the pre-Christian belief systems of other parts of the world, such as Sub-Saharan Africa or the Americas, could not be seen as part of the contemporary Pagan movement, which was "fundamentally Eurocentric" in its focus.[1] Similarly, Strmiska stressed that modern Paganism should not be conflated with the belief systems of the world's indigenous peoples because the latter lived within the context of colonialism and its legacy, and that while some Pagan worldviews bore similarities to those of indigenous communities, they each stemmed from "different cultural, linguistic, and historical backgrounds."[25]

Many scholars have favored the use of "Neopaganism" to describe this phenomenon, with the prefix "neo-" serving to clearly distinguish the modern religions from their ancient, pre-Christian counterparts.[26] Some Pagan practitioners also prefer "Neopaganism", believing that the prefix conveys the reformed nature of the religion, including for instance its rejection of superstition and animal sacrifice.[26] Conversely, most Pagans do not use the word "Neopagan",[18] with some expressing disapproval of it, arguing that the term "neo" offensively disconnects them from what they perceive as their pre-Christian forebears.[17] Accordingly, to avoid causing offense many scholars in the English-speaking world have begun using the prefixes "modern" or "contemporary" rather than "neo".[27] Several academics operating in Pagan studies, such as Ronald Hutton and Sabina Magliocco, have emphasized the use of the upper-case "Paganism" to distinguish the modern movement from the lower-case "paganism", a term which is commonly used for pre-Christian belief systems.[28] In 2015, Rountree stated that this lower case/upper case division was "now [the] convention" in Pagan studies.[18]

The Parthenon, an ancient pre-Christian temple in Athens dedicated to the goddess Athena. Strmiska believed that modern Pagans in part reappropriate the term "pagan" to honor the cultural achievements of Europe's pre-Christian societies

According to Strmiska, the reappropriation of the term "pagan" by modern Pagans served as "a deliberate act of defiance" against "traditional, Christian-dominated society", allowing them to use it as a source of "pride and power".[17] In this, he compared it to the gay liberation movement's reappropriation of the term "queer", which had formerly been used only as a term of homophobic abuse.[17] He suggested that part of the term's appeal resided in the fact that a large proportion of Pagan converts were raised in Christian families, and that by embracing the term "pagan" – a word long used in reference to that which was "rejected and reviled by Christian authorities" – these converts are summarizing "in a single word his or her definitive break" from Christianity.[31] He further suggested that the term "pagan" had been made appealing through its depiction in romanticist and European nationalist literature from the 19th century, where it had been imbued with "a certain mystery and allure".[32] A third point raised by Strmiska was that by embracing the word "pagan", modern Pagans are defying past religious intolerance in order to honor the pre-Christian peoples of Europe and emphasize these societies' cultural and artistic achievements.[33]

For some Pagan groups, ethnicity is central to their religion, and they often restrict membership to those who are of the same ethnic group as themselves.[34] Critics of this position have described this exclusionary approach as a form of racism.[34] Alternately, other Pagan groups allow individuals of any ethnicity to join them, expressing the view that the gods and goddesses of a particular region can call anyone to their worship.[35] Sometimes such individuals express the view that they feel a particular affinity for the pre-Christian belief systems of a particular region with which they have no ethnic link because they themselves are the reincarnation of an individual from that society.[36] There is a greater focus on ethnicity within the Pagan movements of continental Europe in contrast to those in North America and the British Isles.[37] Such ethnic Paganisms have varyingly been seen as responses to concerns regarding foreign colonizing ideologies, globalization, cosmopolitanism, and anxieties about cultural erosion.[38] Ethnically restricted groups will face challenges to their attitudes as Eastern and Northern Europe become increasingly ethnically diverse through migration and inter-marriage.[39]

Although acknowledging that it was "a highly simplified model", Aitamurto and Simpson commented that there was "some truth" to the claim that leftist-oriented forms of Paganism were prevalent in North America and the British Isles, whereas rightist-oriented forms of Paganism were prevalent in Central and Eastern Europe.[14] They noted that in these latter regions, Pagan groups placed an emphasis on "the centrality of the nation, the ethnic group, or the tribe".[12] Rountree stated that it was wrong to assume that "expressions of Paganism can be categorized straight-forwardly according to region", although acknowledged that some regional trends were visible, such as the impact of Catholicism on Paganism in Southern Europe.[40]

"We might say that Reconstructionist Pagans romanticize the past, while Eclectic Pagans idealize the future. In the first case, there is a deeply felt need to connect with the past as a source of spiritual strength and wisdom; in the second case, there is the idealistic hope that a spirituality of nature can be gleaned from ancient sources and shared with all humanity."

Another division within modern Paganism rests on differing attitudes to the source material surrounding pre-Christian belief systems.[36] Strmiska notes that Pagan groups can be "divided along a continuum: at one end are those that aim to reconstruct the ancient religious traditions of a particular ethnic group or a linguistic or geographic area to the highest degree possible; at the other end are those that freely blend traditions of different areas, peoples, and time periods."[42] Strmiska argues that these two poles could be termed reconstructionism and eclecticism, respectively.[43] Reconstructionists do not altogether reject innovation in their interpretation and adaptation of the source material, however they do believe that the source material conveys greater authenticity and thus should be emphasized.[42] They often follow scholarly debates about the nature of such pre-Christian religions, and some reconstructionists are themselves scholars.[42] Eclectic Pagans, conversely, seek general inspiration from the pre-Christian past, and do not attempt to recreate past rites or traditions with specific attention to detail.[44]

On the reconstructionist side can be placed those movements which often favour the designation "Native Faith", including Romuva, Heathenry, and Hellenism.[13] On the eclectic side has been placed Wicca, Thelema, Adonism, Druidry, the Goddess Movement, Discordianism, and the Radical Faeries.[13] Strmiska also suggests that this division could be seen as being based on "discourses of identity", with reconstructionists emphasizing a deep-rooted sense of place and people, and eclectics embracing a universality and openness toward humanity and the Earth.[45]

Strmiska nevertheless notes that this reconstructionist-eclectic division is "neither as absolute nor as straightforward as it might appear".[46] He cites the example of Dievturība, a form of reconstructionist Paganism that seeks to revive the pre-Christian religion of the Latvian people, by noting that it exhibits eclectic tendencies by adopting a monotheistic focus and ceremonial structure from Lutheranism.[46] Similarly, while examining neo-shamanism among the Sami people of Northern Scandinavia, Siv Ellen Kraft highlights that despite the religion being reconstructionist in intent, it is highly eclectic in the manner in which it has adopted elements from shamanic traditions in other parts of the world.[47] In discussing Asatro – a form of Heathenry based in Denmark – Matthew Amster notes that it did not fit clearly within such a framework, because while seeking a reconstructionist form of historical accuracy, Asatro nevertheless strongly eschewed the emphasis on ethnicity that is common to other reconstructionist groups.[48] While Wicca is identified as an eclectic form of Paganism,[49] Strmiska also notes that some Wiccans have moved in a more reconstructionist direction by focusing on a particular ethnic and cultural link, thus developing such variants as Norse Wicca and Celtic Wicca.[46] Concern has also been expressed regarding the utility of the term "reconstructionism" when dealing with Paganisms in Central and Eastern Europe, because in many of the languages of these regions, equivalents of the term "reconstructionism" – such as the Czech Historická rekonstrukce and Lithuanian Istorinė rekonstrukcija – are already used to define the secular hobby of historical re-enactment.[50]

Some Pagans distinguish their beliefs and practices as a form of religious naturalism, embracing a naturalistic worldview.[51] This grouping includes Humanistic Pagans and Atheopagans. Many of these naturalistic Pagans aim for an explicitly nature-centered or ecocentric practice.[52]

"Modern Pagans are reviving, reconstructing, and reimagining religious traditions of the past that were suppressed for a very long time, even to the point of being almost totally obliterated... Thus, with only a few possible exceptions, today's Pagans cannot claim to be continuing religious traditions handed down in an unbroken line from ancient times to the present. They are modern people with a great reverence for the spirituality of the past, making a new religion – a modern Paganism – from the remnants of the past, which they interpret, adapt, and modify according to modern ways of thinking."

Although inspired by the pre-Christian belief systems of the past, modern Paganism is not the same phenomenon as these lost traditions and in many respects differs from them considerably.[53] Strmiska stresses that modern Paganism is a "new", "modern" religious movement, even if some of its "content" derive from ancient sources.[53] Contemporary Paganism as practiced in the United States in the 1990s has been described as "a synthesis of historical inspiration and present-day creativity".[54]

Eclectic Paganism takes an undogmatic religious stance,[55] and therefore potentially see no one as having authority to deem a source apocryphal. Contemporary paganism has therefore been prone to fakelore, especially in recent years as information and misinformation alike have been spread on the Internet and in print media. A number of Wiccan, pagan and even some Traditionalist or Tribalist groups have a history of Grandmother Stories – typically involving initiation by a Grandmother, Grandfather, or other elderly relative who is said to have instructed them in the secret, millennia-old traditions of their ancestors. As this secret wisdom can almost always be traced to recent sources, tellers of these stories have often later admitted they made them up.[56] Strmiska asserts that contemporary paganism could be viewed as a part of the "much larger phenomenon" of efforts to revive "traditional, indigenous, or native religions" that were occurring across the globe.[β]

Beliefs and practices vary widely among different Pagan groups; however, there are a series of core principles common to most, if not all, forms of modern paganism.[57] The English academic Graham Harvey noted that Pagans "rarely indulge in theology".[58]

One principle of the Pagan movement is polytheism, the belief in and veneration of multiple gods and/or goddesses.[57][58] Within the Pagan movement, there can be found many deities, both male and female, who have various associations and embody forces of nature, aspects of culture, and facets of human psychology.[59] These deities are typically depicted in human form, and are viewed as having human faults.[59] They are therefore not seen as perfect, but rather are venerated as being wise and powerful.[60] Pagans feel that this understanding of the gods reflected the dynamics of life on Earth, allowing for the expression of humour.[60]

One view in the Pagan community is that these polytheistic deities are not viewed as literal entities, but as Jungian archetypes or other psychological constructs that exist in the human psyche.[61] Others adopt the belief that the deities have both a psychological and external existence.[62] Many Pagans believe adoption of a polytheistic world-view would be beneficial for western society – replacing the dominant monotheism they see as innately repressive.[63] In fact, many American neopagans first came to their adopted faiths because it allowed a greater freedom, diversity, and tolerance of worship among the community.[64] This pluralistic perspective has helped the varied factions of modern Paganism exist in relative harmony.[55] Most Pagans adopt an ethos of "unity in diversity" regarding their religious beliefs.[65]

It is its inclusion of female deity which distinguishes Pagan religions from their Abrahamic counterparts.[62] In Wicca, male and female deities are typically balanced out in a form of duotheism.[62] Many East Asian philosophies equate weakness with femininity and strength with masculinity; this is not the prevailing attitude in paganism and Wicca.[66] Among many Pagans, there is a strong desire to incorporate the female aspects of the divine in their worship and within their lives, which can partially explain the attitude which sometimes manifests as the veneration of women.[γ]

There are exceptions to polytheism in Paganism,[67] as seen for instance in the form of Ukrainian Paganism promoted by Lev Sylenko, which is devoted to a monotheistic veneration of the god Dazhbog.[67] As noted above, Pagans with naturalistic worldviews may not believe in or work with deities at all.

Pagan religions commonly exhibit a metaphysical concept of an underlying order that pervades the universe, such as the concept of harmonia embraced by Hellenists and that of Wyrd found in Heathenry.[68]

A key part of most Pagan worldviews is the holistic concept of a universe that is interconnected. This is connected with a belief in either pantheism or panentheism. In both beliefs divinity and the material and/or spiritual universe are one.[69] For pagans, pantheism means that "divinity is inseparable from nature and that deity is immanent in nature".[55]

Dennis D. Carpenter noted that the belief in a pantheistic or panentheistic deity has led to the idea of interconnectedness playing a key part in pagans' worldviews.[69] The prominent Reclaiming priestess Starhawk related that a core part of goddess-centred pagan witchcraft was "the understanding that all being is interrelated, that we are all linked with the cosmos as parts of one living organism. What affects one of us affects us all."[70]

Another pivotal belief in the contemporary Pagan movement is that of animism.[58] This has been interpreted in two distinct ways among the Pagan community. First, it can refer to a belief that everything in the universe is imbued with a life force or spiritual energy.[57][δ] In contrast, some contemporary Pagans believe that there are specific spirits that inhabit various features in the natural world, and that these can be actively communicated with. Some Pagans have reported experiencing communication with spirits dwelling in rocks, plants, trees and animals, as well as power animals or animal spirits who can act as spiritual helpers or guides.[71]

Animism was also a concept common to many pre-Christian European religions, and in adopting it, contemporary Pagans are attempting to "reenter the primeval worldview" and participate in a view of cosmology "that is not possible for most Westerners after childhood".[72]

Pagan ritual can take place in both a public and private setting.[68] Contemporary Pagan ritual is typically geared towards "facilitating altered states of awareness or shifting mind-sets".[74] In order to induce such altered states of consciousness, pagans utilize such elements as drumming, visualization, chanting, singing, dancing, and meditation.[74] American folklorist Sabina Magliocco came to the conclusion, based upon her ethnographic fieldwork in California that certain Pagan beliefs "arise from what they experience during religious ecstasy".[75]

Sociologist Margot Adler highlighted how several Pagan groups, like the Reformed Druids of North America and the Erisian movement incorporate a great deal of play in their rituals rather than having them be completely serious and somber. She noted that there are those who would argue that "the Pagan community is one of the only spiritual communities that is exploring humor, joy, abandonment, even silliness and outrageousness as valid parts of spiritual experience".[76]

Domestic worship typically takes place in the home and is carried out by either an individual or family group.[77] It typically involves offerings – including bread, cake, flowers, fruit, milk, beer, or wine – being given to images of deities, often accompanied with prayers and songs and the lighting of candles and incense.[77] Common Pagan devotional practices have thus been compared to similar practices in Hinduism, Buddhism, Shinto, Roman Catholicism, and Orthodox Christianity, but contrasted with that in Protestantism, Judaism, and Islam.[78] Although animal sacrifice was a common part of pre-Christian ritual in Europe, it is rarely practiced in contemporary Paganism.[77]

Paganism's public rituals are generally calendrical,[68] although the pre-Christian festivals that Pagans use as a basis varied across Europe.[79] Nevertheless, common to almost all Pagan religions is an emphasis on an agricultural cycle and respect for the dead.[77] Common Pagan festivals include those marking the summer solstice and winter solstice as well as the start of spring and the harvest.[68] In Wicca, a Wheel of the Year has been developed which typically involves eight seasonal festivals.[77]

The belief in magical rituals and spells is held by a "significant number" of contemporary Pagans.[80] Among those who believe in magic, there are a variety of different views as to what magic is. Many Neopagans adhere to the definition provided by Aleister Crowley, founder of Thelema, who defined magick[sic] as "the Science and Art of causing change to occur in conformity with Will". Also accepted by many is the related definition purported by ceremonial magicianDion Fortune, who declared "magic is the art and science of changing consciousness according to the Will".[80]

Among those who practice magic are Wiccans, those who identify as Neopagan Witches, and practitioners of some forms of revivalist Neo-druidism, the rituals of whom are at least partially based upon those of ceremonial magic and freemasonry.[81]

Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.

The origins of modern Paganism lie in the romanticist and national liberation movements that developed in Europe during the 18th and 19th centuries.[82] The publications of studies into European folk customs and culture by scholars like Johann Gottfried Herder and Jacob Grimm resulted in a wider interest in these subjects and a growth in cultural self-consciousness.[82] At the time, it was commonly believed that almost all such folk customs were survivals from the pre-Christian period.[83] These attitudes would also be exported to North America by European immigrants in these centuries.[83]

"The rise of modern Paganism is both a result and a measure of increased religious liberty and rising tolerance for religious diversity in modern societies, a liberty and tolerance made possible by the curbing of the sometimes oppressive power wielded by Christian authorities to compel obedience and participation in centuries past. To say it another way, modern Paganism is one of the happy stepchildren of modern multiculturalism and social pluralism."

The rise of modern Paganism was aided by the decline in Christianity throughout many parts of Europe and North America,[83] as well as by the concomitant decline in enforced religious conformity and greater freedom of religion that developed, allowing people to explore a wider range of spiritual options and form religious organisations that could operate free from legal persecution.[86]

Historian Ronald Hutton has argued that many of the motifs of 20th century neo-Paganism may be traced back to utopian, mystical counter-cultures of the late-Victorian and Edwardian periods, via the works of amateur folklorists, popular authors, poets, political radicals and alternative lifestylers.

Prior to the spread of the 20th-century neopagan movement, a notable instance of self-identified paganism was in Sioux writer Zitkala-sa's essay "Why I Am A Pagan". Published in the Atlantic Monthly in 1902, the Native American activist and writer outlined her rejection of Christianity (referred to as "the new superstition") in favor of a harmony with nature embodied by the Great Spirit. She further recounted her mother's abandonment of Sioux religion and the unsuccessful attempts of a "native preacher" to get her to attend the village church.[87]

In the 1920s Margaret Murray theorized that a Witchcraft religion existed underground and in secret, and had survived through the witchcraft prosecutions that had been enacted by the ecclesiastical and secular courts. Most historians now reject Murray's theory, as she based it partially upon the similarities of the accounts given by those accused of witchcraft; such similarity is now thought to actually derive from there having been a standard set of questions laid out in the witch-hunting manuals used by interrogators.[88]

The 1980s and 1990s also saw an increasing interest in serious academic research and reconstructionist pagan traditions. The establishment and growth of the Internet in the 1990s brought rapid growth to these, and other pagan movements.[91] After the collapse of the Soviet Union, freedom of religion was legally established across Russia and Eastern Europe, allowing for the growth in both Christian and non-Christian religions, among them Paganism.[92]

Goddess Spirituality, which is also known as the Goddess movement, is a Pagan religion in which a singular, monotheistic Goddess is given predominance. Designed primarily for women, Goddess Spirituality revolves around the sacredness of the female form, and of aspects of women's lives that have been traditionally neglected in western society, such as menstruation, sexuality and maternity.[93]

Adherents of the Goddess Spirituality movement typically envision a history of the world that is different from traditional narratives about the past, emphasising the role of women rather than that of men. According to this view, human society was formerly a matriarchy, with communities being egalitarian, pacifistic and focused on the worship of the Goddess, and was subsequently overthrown by violent patriarchal hordes - usually Indo-Europeanpastoralists, who worshipped male sky gods and who continued to rule through the form of Abrahamic Religions, specifically Christianity in the West. Adherents look for elements of this mythological history in "theological, anthropological, archaeological, historical, folkloric and hagiographic writings".[94]

Heathenism, also known as Germanic Neopaganism, refers to a series of contemporary Pagan traditions that are based upon the historical religions, culture and literature of Germanic-speaking Europe. Heathenry is spread out across north-western Europe, and also North America and Australasia, where the descendants of historic Germanic-speaking people now live.[95]

Many Heathen groups adopt variants of Norse mythology as a basis to their beliefs, conceiving of the Earth as being situated on a great world tree called Yggdrasil. Heathens believe in multiple polytheistic deities, all adopted from historical Germanic mythologies. The majority of Heathens are polytheistic realists, believing that the deities are real entities, while others view them as Jungian archetypes.[96]

Since the 1960s and 70s, paganism and the then emergent counter-culture, New Age, and hippie movements experienced a degree of cross pollination.[98] Reconstructionism rose to prominence in the 1980s and 1990s. The majority of pagans are not committed to a single defined tradition, but understand paganism as encompassing a wide range of non-institutionalized spirituality, as promoted by the Church of All Worlds, the Feri Tradition and other movements. Notably, Wicca in the United States since the 1970s has largely moved away from its Gardnerian roots and diversified into eclectic variants.

Eco-paganism and Eco-magic, which are offshoots of direct action environmental groups, have a strong emphasis on fairy imagery and a belief in the possibility of intercession by the fae (fairies, pixies, gnomes, elves, and other spirits of nature and the Otherworlds).[ζ]

Some Unitarian Universalists are eclectic pagans. Unitarian Universalists look for spiritual inspiration in a wide variety of religious beliefs. The Covenant of Unitarian Universalist Pagans, or CUUPs, encourages their member chapters to "use practices familiar to members who attend for worship services but not to follow only one tradition of paganism".[99]

In 1925, the Czech esotericist Franz Sättler founded a pagan religion known as Adonism, devoted to the ancient Greek god Adonis, whom Sättler equated with the Christian Satan, and which purported that the end of the world would come in the year 2000. Adonism largely died out in the 1930s, but remained an influence on the German occult scene.[100]

In the western world, distinct forms of paganism have been developed by and for members of the LGBT community. Margot Adler noted how there were many pagan groups whose practices revolved around the inclusion and celebration of male homosexuality, such as the Minoan Brotherhood, a Wiccan group that combines the iconography from ancient Minoan religion with a Wiccan theology and an emphasis on men-loving-men, and the eclectic pagan group known as the Radical Faeries. Similarly, there are also groups for lesbians, like certain forms of Dianic Wicca and the Minoan Sisterhood. When Adler asked one gay pagan what the pagan community offered members of the LGBT community, the reply was "A place to belong. Community. Acceptance. And a way to connect with all kinds of people, gay, bi, straight, celibate, transgender, in a way that is hard to do in the greater society."[101]

Other forms of Wicca have also attracted homosexual people, for instance, the theologian Jone Salomonsen noted that there was an unusually high number of LGBT, and particularly bisexual individuals within the Reclaiming tradition of San Francisco when she was doing her fieldwork there in the 1980s and 1990s.[102]

Wicca is the largest form of Paganism,[39] as well as the best known form,[103] and the most extensively studied by academics.[104]

This pentacle, worn as a pendant, depicts a pentagram, or five-pointed star, used as a symbol of Wicca by many adherents.

The scholar of religious studies Graham Harvey noted that a poem known as the Charge of the Goddess remains central to the liturgy of most Wiccan groups. Originally written by Wiccan High Priestess Doreen Valiente in the mid-1950s, Harvey noted that the recitation of the Charge in the midst of ritual allows Wiccans to gain wisdom and experience deity in "the ordinary things in life".[105]

The historian Ronald Hutton identified a wide variety of different sources that influenced the development of Wicca. These included ceremonial magic, folk magic, Romanticist literature, Freemasonry, and the historical theories of the English archaeologist Margaret Murray.[81] The figure at the forefront of the burgeoning Wiccan movement was the English esotericist Gerald Gardner, who claimed to have been initiated by the New Forest coven in 1939. Gardner claimed that the religion that he discovered was a modern survival of the old Witch-Cult described in the works of Murray, which had originated in the pre-Christian paganism of Europe. He claimed it was revealed to him by a coven of witches in the New Forest area of southern England. Various forms of Wicca have since evolved or been adapted from Gardner's British Traditional Wicca or Gardnerian Wicca such as Alexandrian Wicca. Other forms loosely based on Gardner's teachings are Faery Wicca, Kemetic Wicca, Judeo-Paganism or jewitchery, Dianic Wicca or feminist Wicca – which emphasizes the divine feminine, often creating women-only or lesbian-only groups.[κ] In the academic community wicca has also been interpreted as having close affinities with process philosophy.[106]

In the 1990s, Wiccan beliefs and practices were used as a partial basis for a number of U.S. films and television series, such as The Craft, Charmed and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, leading to a dramatic upsurge in teenagers and young adults becoming interested and involved in the religion.[107][108]

Beit Asherah (the house of the Goddess Asherah) was one of the first Neopagan synagogues, founded in the early 1990s by Stephanie Fox, Steven Posch, and Magenta Griffiths (Lady Magenta). Magenta Griffiths is High Priestess of the Beit Asherah coven, and a former board member of the Covenant of the Goddess.[109][λ]

Vattisen Yaly could be categorised as a peculiar form of Tengrism, a related revivalist movement of Central Asian traditional religion, however it differs significantly from it: the Chuvash being a heavily Fennicised and Slavified ethnicity (they were also never fully Islamised, contrarywise to most of other Turks), and having had exchanges also with other Indo-European ethnicities,[111] their religion shows many similarities with Finnic and Slavic Paganisms; moreover, the revival of "Vattisen Yaly" in recent decades has occurred following Neopagan patterns.[112] Thus it should be more carefully categorised as a Neopagan religion. Today the followers of the Chuvash Traditional Religion are called "the true Chuvash".[113] Their main god is Tura, a deity comparable to the EstonianTaara, the GermanicThunraz and the pan-Turkic Tengri.[111]

Establishing precise figures on Paganism is difficult. Due to the secrecy and fear of persecution still prevalent among Pagans, limited numbers are willing to openly be counted. The decentralised nature of Paganism and sheer number of solitary practitioners further complicates matters.[114] Nevertheless, there is a slow growing body of data on the subject.[115] Combined statistics from Western nations put Pagans well over one million worldwide.

A study by Ronald Hutton compared a number of different sources (including membership lists of major UK organizations, attendance at major events, subscriptions to magazines, etc.) and used standard models for extrapolating likely numbers. This estimate accounted for multiple membership overlaps as well as the number of adherents represented by each attendee of a pagan gathering. Hutton estimated that there are 250,000 neopagan adherents in the United Kingdom, roughly equivalent to the national Hindu community.[81]

A smaller number is suggested by the results of the 2001 Census, in which a question about religious affiliation was asked for the first time. Respondents were able to write in an affiliation not covered by the checklist of common religions, and a total of 42,262 people from England, Scotland and Wales declared themselves to be Pagans by this method. These figures were not released as a matter of course by the Office for National Statistics, but were released after an application by the Pagan Federation of Scotland.[μ] This is more than many well known traditions such as Rastafarian, Bahá'í and Zoroastrian groups, but fewer than the big six of Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism, Judaism and Buddhism. It is also fewer than the adherents of Jediism, whose campaign made them the fourth largest religion after Christianity, Islam and Hinduism.[ν]

Modern Hellen ritual in Greece

The 2001 UK Census figures did not allow an accurate breakdown of traditions within the Pagan heading, as a campaign by the Pagan Federation before the census encouraged Wiccans, Heathens, Druids and others all to use the same write-in term 'Pagan' in order to maximise the numbers reported. The 2011 census however made it possible to describe oneself as Pagan-Wiccan, Pagan-Druid and so on. The figures for England and Wales showed 80,153 describing themselves as Pagan (or some subgroup thereof.) The largest subgroup was Wicca, with 11,766 adherents.[ξ] The overall numbers of people self-reporting as Pagan rose between 2001 and 2011. In 2001 about seven people per 10,000 UK respondents were pagan; in 2011 the number (based on the England and Wales population) was 14.3 people per 10,000 respondents.

Census figures in Ireland do not provide a breakdown of religions outside of the major Christian denominations and other major world religions. A total of 22,497 people stated Other Religion in the 2006 census; and a rough estimate is that there were 2,000–3,000 practicing pagans in Ireland in 2009. Numerous pagan groups – primarily Wiccan and Druidic – exist in Ireland though none is officially recognised by the Government. Irish Paganism is often strongly concerned with issues of place and language.[ο]

The United States government does not directly collect religious information. As a result such information is provided by religious institutions and other third-party statistical organisations.[σ] Based on the most recent survey by the Pew Forum on religion, there are over one million Pagans estimated to be living in the United States.[117] Up to 0.4% of respondents answered "Pagan" or "Wiccan" when polled.[118]

Based upon her study of the pagan community in the United States, the sociologist Margot Adler noted that it is rare for Pagan groups to proselytize in order to gain new converts to their faiths. Instead, she argued that "in most cases", converts first become interested in the movement through "word of mouth, a discussion between friends, a lecture, a book, an article or a Web site". She went on to put forward the idea that this typically confirmed "some original, private experience, so that the most common experience of those who have named themselves pagan is something like 'I finally found a group that has the same religious perceptions I always had'".[122] A practicing Wiccan herself, Adler used her own conversion to paganism as a case study, remarking that as a child she had taken a great interest in the gods and goddesses of ancient Greece, and had performed her own devised rituals in dedication to them. When she eventually came across the Wiccan religion many years later, she then found that it confirmed her earlier childhood experiences, and that "I never converted in the accepted sense. I simply accepted, reaffirmed, and extended a very old experience."[123]

A simple Heathen altar.

Folklorist Sabina Magliocco supported this idea, noting that a great many of those Californian Pagans whom she interviewed claimed that they had been greatly interested in mythology and folklore as children, imagining a world of "enchanted nature and magical transformations, filled with lords and ladies, witches and wizards, and humble but often wise peasants". Magliocco noted that it was this world that pagans "strive to re-create in some measure".[124] Further support for Adler's idea came from American Wiccan priestess Judy Harrow, who noted that among her comrades, there was a feeling that "you don't become pagan, you discover that you always were".[125] They have also been supported by Pagan studies scholar Graham Harvey.[126]

Many pagans in North America encounter the movement through their involvement in other hobbies; particularly popular with U.S. Pagans are "golden age"-type pastimes such as the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA), Star Trek fandom, Doctor Who fandom and comic book fandom. Other manners in which many North American pagans have got involved with the movement are through political and/or ecological activism, such as "vegetarian groups, health food stores" or feminist university courses.[127]

Adler went on to note that from those she interviewed and surveyed in the U.S., she could identify a number of common factors that led to people getting involved in Paganism: the beauty, vision and imagination that was found within their beliefs and rituals, a sense of intellectual satisfaction and personal growth that they imparted, their support for environmentalism and/or feminism, and a sense of freedom.[128]

Based upon her work in the United States, Adler found that the pagan movement was "very diverse" in its class and ethnic background.[129] She went on to remark that she had encountered pagans in jobs that ranged from "fireman to PhD chemist" but that the one thing that she thought made them into an "elite" was as avid readers, something that she found to be very common within the pagan community despite the fact that avid readers constituted less than 20% of the general population of the United States at the time.[130] Magliocco came to a somewhat different conclusion based upon her ethnographic research of pagans in California, remarking that the majority were "white, middle-class, well-educated urbanites" but that they were united in finding "artistic inspiration" within "folk and indigenous spiritual traditions".[131]

The sociologist Regina Oboler examined the role of gender in the U.S. Pagan community, arguing that although the movement had been constant in its support for the equality of men and women ever since its foundation, there was still an essentialist view of gender engrained within it, with female deities being accorded traditional western feminine traits and male deities being similarly accorded what western society saw as masculine traits.[132]

"Neopagan practices highlight the centrality of the relationship between humans and nature and reinvent religions of the past, while New Agers are more interested in transforming individual consciousness and shaping the future."

An issue of academic debate has been regarding the connection between the New Age movement and contemporary Paganism, or Neo-Paganism. Religious studies scholar Sarah Pike asserted that there was a "significant overlap" between the two religious movements,[134] while Aidan A. Kelly stated that Paganism "parallels the New Age movement in some ways, differs sharply from it in others, and overlaps it in some minor ways".[135] Ethan Doyle White stated that while the Pagan and New Age movements "do share commonalities and overlap", they were nevertheless "largely distinct phenomena."[136] Hanegraaff suggested that whereas various forms of contemporary Paganism were not part of the New Age movement – particularly those who pre-dated the movement – other Pagan religions and practices could be identified as New Age.[137] Various differences between the two movements have been highlighted; the New Age movement focuses on an improved future, whereas the focus of Paganism is on the pre-Christian past.[138] Similarly, the New Age movement typically propounds a universalist message which sees all religions as fundamentally the same, whereas Paganism stresses the difference between monotheistic religions and those embracing a polytheistic or animistic theology.[138] Further, the New Age movement shows little interest in magic and witchcraft, which are conversely core interests of many Pagan religions, such as Wicca.[138]

Many Pagans have sought to distance themselves from the New Age movement, even using "New Age" as an insult within their community, while conversely many involved in the New Age have expressed criticism of Paganism for emphasizing the material world over the spiritual.[136] Many Pagans have expressed criticism of the high fees charged by New Age teachers, something not typically present in the Pagan movement.[139]

In Modern Paganism in World Cultures: Comparative Perspectives Michael F. Strmiska writes that "in Pagan magazines, websites, and Internet discussion venues, Christianity is frequently denounced as an antinatural, antifemale, sexually and culturally repressive, guilt-ridden, and authoritarian religion that has fostered intolerance, hypocrisy, and persecution throughout the world."[140] Further, there is a deep belief that Christianity and Paganism are fundamentally opposing belief systems.[140] This animosity is flamed by the ancient Christian oppression of pre-Christian religion as well as the ongoing Christian oppression of Pagans.[140] Many Pagans have expressed frustration that Christian authorities have never apologized for the cultural genocide and religious persecution of Europe's pre-Christian belief systems, particularly following the Roman Catholic Church's apology for past anti-semitism in its A Reflection on the Shoah.[141] They also express disapproval of Christianity's continued missionary efforts around the globe at the expense of indigenous and other polytheistic faiths.[142]

Some Christian theologians view modern Paganism as a movement that cannot be tolerated but must be fought and defeated.[33] Various Christian authors have published books attacking modern Paganism.[33] Such Christian critics have regularly equated Paganism with Satanism, something which has been furthered by the portrayal of the former in some mainstream media.[143] In areas such as the U.S. Bible Belt where conservative Christian dominance is strong, Pagans have faced continued religious persecution.[142] For instance, Strmiska highlighted instances in both the U.S. and U.K. in which school teachers were fired when their employers discovered that they were Pagan.[144]

Accordingly, many Pagans keep their religious adherence a secret, seeking to avoid such discrimination.[145]

The earliest academic studies of contemporary Paganism were published in the late 1970s and 1980s by scholars like Margot Adler, Marcello Truzzi and Tanya Luhrmann, although it would not be until the 1990s that the actual multidisciplinary academic field of Pagan studies properly developed, pioneered by academics such as Graham Harvey and Chas S. Clifton. Increasing academic interest in Paganism has been attributed to the new religious movement's increasing public visibility, as it began interacting with the interfaith movement and holding large public celebrations at sites like Stonehenge.[146]

The first international academic conference on the subject of Pagan studies was held at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, North-East England in 1993. It was organised by two British religious studies scholars, Graham Harvey and Charlotte Hardman.[147] In April 1996 a larger conference dealing with contemporary Paganism took place at Ambleside in the Lake District. Organised by the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Lancaster, North-West England, it was entitled "Nature Religion Today: Western Paganism, Shamanism and Esotericism in the 1990s", and led to the publication of an academic anthology, entitled Nature Religion Today: Paganism in the Modern World.[147] In 2004, the first peer-reviewed, academic journal devoted to Pagan studies began publication. The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies was edited by Clifton, while the academic publishers AltaMira Press began release of the Pagan Studies Series.[φ] From 2008 onward, conferences have been held bringing together scholars specialising in the study of Paganism in Central and Eastern Europe.[148]

The relationship between Pagan studies scholars and some practising Pagans has at times been strained. The Australian academic and practising Pagan Caroline Jane Tully argues that many Pagans can react negatively to new scholarship regarding historical pre-Christian societies, believing that it is a threat to the structure of their beliefs and to their "sense of identity". She furthermore argues that some of those dissatisfied Pagans lashed out against academics as a result, particularly on the internet.[149]

^"The very persons who would most writhe and wail at their surroundings if transported back into early Greece, would, I think, be the neo-pagans and Hellas worshipers of today." (W. James, letter of 5 April 1868, cited after OED); "The neopagan impulse of the classical revival". (J. A. Symonds, Renaissance in Italy, 1877, iv. 193); "Pre-Raphaelitism [...] has got mixed up with æstheticism, neo-paganism, and other such fantasies." (J. McCarthy, A History of Our Own Times, 1880 iv. 542).

^McColman, Carl (2003) Complete Idiot's Guide to Celtic Wisdom. Alpha Press ISBN0-02-864417-4. p.12: "Some groups have gone even further, trying to use archaeology, religious history, comparative mythology, and even the study of non-Celtic Indo-European religions in an effort to create a well-researched and scholarly 'reconstruction' of the ancient Celts."

^Pagan Awareness Network Inc. Australia (2011). "Australian Census Pagan Dash". Facebook Public Event. Australia. Retrieved 13 March 2013. The aim is to get Pagans of all persuasions (Wiccan, Druid, Asatru, Hellenic, Egyptian, Heathen etc.) to put themselves on the census form as 'Pagan' or 'Pagan, *your path*'.... Paganism is included in the Australian Standard Classification of Religious Groups (ASCRG), as a separate output category.... The classification structure of this group is: 613 Nature Religions 6130 Nature Religions, nfd (not further defined) 6131 Animism 6132 Druidism 6133 Paganism 6134 Pantheism 6135 Wiccan/Witchcraft 6139 Nature Religions, nec (not elsewhere classified) If a response of Pagan is qualified with additional information such as Druid or Wiccan, this additional information will be used in classifying the response. For example, Pagan Wiccan would be classified as 6135 and Pagan Celtic would be 6133. Pagan alone would be classified as 6133.

Kelly, Aidan A. (1992). "An Update on Neopagan Witchcraft in America". In James R. Lewis and J. Gordon Melton. Perspectives on the New Age. New York: State University of New York Press. pp. 136–151. ISBN0-7914-1213-X.

Carpenter, Dennis D. (1996). "Emergent Nature Spirituality: An Examination of the Major Spiritual Contours of the Contemporary Pagan Worldview". In Lewis, James R.Magical Religion and Modern Witchcraft. Albany: State University of New York Press. ISBN978-0-7914-2890-0.

Tully, Caroline Jane (2011). "Researching the Past is a Foreign Country: Cognitive Dissonance as a Response by Practitioner Pagans to Academic Research on the History of Pagan Religions". The Pomegranate: the International Journal of Pagan Studies. London: Equinox. 13 (1).

1.
Polytheistic reconstructionism
–
Polytheistic reconstructionism is an approach to paganism first emerging in the late 1960s to early 1970s, which gathered momentum starting in the 1990s. I wish the Teutonic world would once more think in terms of Thor and Wotan, and I wish the Druidic world would see, honestly, that in the mistletoe is their mystery, and that they themselves are the Tuatha De Danaan, alive, but submerged. And a new Hermes should come back to the Mediterranean, and a new Ashtaroth to Tunis, and Mithras again to Persia, and Brahma unbroken to India, the term Reconstructionist Paganism was likely coined by Isaac Bonewits in the late 1970s. Bonewits has said that he is not sure whether he got this use of the term from one or more of the other culturally focused Neopagan movements of the time, or if just applied it in a novel fashion. Margot Adler later used the term Pagan Reconstructionists in the 1979 edition of Drawing Down the Moon to refer to those who claimed to adhere to some sort of historical religion. This emphasis on reconstruction is in ostensible contrast to more fanciful approaches to paganism in Romanticism, linzie enumerates the difference between modern reconstructionist polytheism, with classical paganism as found in eighteenth to mid-twentieth century movements. Aspects of the former, not found in the latter, are as follows, researchers attempt to stay within research guidelines developed over the course of the past century for handling documentation generated in the time periods that they are studying. With an overt attempt to avoid pseudo-sciences, There are serious attempts to recreate culture, politics, science and art of the period in order to better understand the environment within which the religious beliefs were practiced. The use of the terms Pagan and Neopagan to apply to polytheistic reconstructionists is controversial, uncovering the Effects of Cultural Background on the Reconstruction of Ancient Worldviews. Margot Adler, Drawing Down the Moon, Witches, Druids, Goddess-Worshippers, the Recons The CR FAQ - An Introduction to Celtic Reconstructionism A consensus document, co-authored by representatives

2.
List of Neopagan movements
–
Neopaganism encompasses a wide range of religious groups and individuals. These may include old occult groups, those that follow a New Age approach, those that try to reconstruct old ethnic religions, for organizations, the founding year is given in brackets. Pre-World War II Neopagan or proto-Neopagan groups, growing out of occultism and/or Romanticism, there are two core traditions of Wicca which originated in Britain, Gardnerian and Alexandrian, which are sometimes referred to as British Traditional Wicca. From these two arose several other variant traditions, Wicca has also inspired a great number of other witchcraft traditions in Britain, Europe and the United States, most of which base their beliefs and practices on Wicca. Many movements are influenced by the Movement of the Goddess, and New Age, various currents and denominations have arisen over the years within it

3.
Germanic Neopaganism
–
Heathenry, also termed Heathenism or Germanic Neopaganism, is a modern Pagan religion. Classified as a new movement, its practitioners model their faith on the pre-Christian belief systems adhered to by the Germanic peoples of Iron Age. To reconstruct these past belief systems, Heathenry uses surviving historical, archaeological, although lacking a unified theology, Heathenry is typically polytheistic, centering on a pantheon of deities from pre-Christian Germanic Europe which includes both gods and goddesses. It adopts cosmological views from these religions, including an animistic view of the cosmos in which the natural world is imbued with spirits. The faiths deities and these spirits are honored in sacrificial rites known as blóts in which food and these are often accompanied by symbel, the act of ceremonially toasting the gods with an alcoholic beverage. Heathen ethical systems place great emphasis on honor, personal integrity, a central division within the Heathen movement surrounds the issue of race. Many groups eschew racialist ideas, adopting a universalist perspective which holds that the religion is open to all, some folkish Heathens further combine the religion with explicitly racist and white supremacist perspectives. Although the term Heathenry is used widely to describe the religion as a whole, many groups prefer different forms of designation, influenced by their regional focus and their attitude to race. While a number of groups venerating Scandinavian deities use Ásatrú or Forn Sed, the religions origins lie in the 19th and early 20th century Romanticist movement which glorified the pre-Christian beliefs of Germanic societies. In the 1970s, new Heathen groups emerged in Europe and North America, in recent decades, the Heathen movement has been the subject of academic study by scholars active in the field of Pagan studies. Scholarly estimates put the number of Heathens at no more than 20,000 worldwide, with communities of practitioners being active in Europe, North America, scholars of religious studies classify Heathenry as a new religious movement, and more specifically as a reconstructionist form of modern Paganism. Heathenry is a movement to revive and/or reinterpret for the present day the practices, practitioners seek to revive these past belief systems by using surviving historical source materials. Some Heathens also adopt ideas from the evidence of pre-Christian Northern Europe and from recorded folk tales. Some, for instance, adapt their practices according to unverified personal gnosis that they have gained through spiritual experiences, conversely, others draw inspiration from the beliefs and practices of a specific geographical area and chronological period within Germanic Europe, such as Anglo-Saxon England or Viking Age Iceland. The anthropologist Murphy Pizza suggested that Heathenry could be understood as an example of what the historian Eric Hobsbawm termed an invented tradition, no central religious authority exists to impose a particular terminological designation on all practitioners. Academics studying the religion have typically favoured the terms Heathenry and Heathenism to describe it and this term is the most commonly used option by practitioners in the United Kingdom, with growing usage in North America and elsewhere. Many practitioners favor the term Heathen over Pagan because the term originated among Germanic languages. A further term used in academic contexts is Germanic Neopaganism

4.
Wheel of the Year
–
The Wheel of the Year is an annual cycle of seasonal festivals, observed by many modern Pagans. The festivals celebrated by differing sects of modern Paganism can vary considerably in name, observing the cycle of the seasons has been important to many people, both ancient and modern, and many contemporary Pagan festivals are based to varying degrees on folk traditions. The contemporary Wheel of the Year is somewhat of a modern innovation, many historical pagan traditions celebrated various equinoxes, solstices, and the days approximately midway between them for their seasonal and agricultural significances. But none were known to have all eight above all other annual. The modern understanding of the Wheel is a result of the awareness that began developing by the time of Modern Europe. Mid-20th century British Paganism had a influence on early adoption of an eightfold Wheel. By the late 1950s, the Wiccan Bricket Wood Coven and Order of Bards, Ovates and this also had the benefit of more closely aligning celebration between the two influential Pagan orders. These festivals are not, however, as distributed throughout the year as in Wicca. In many traditions of modern Pagan cosmology, all things are considered to be cyclical, with time as a cycle of growth. This cycle is also viewed as a micro- and macrocosm of other cycles in an immeasurable series of cycles composing the Universe. The days that fall on the landmarks of the yearly cycle traditionally mark the beginnings and they are regarded with significance and host to major communal festivals. These eight festivals are the most common times for community celebrations, in Wiccan and Wicca-influenced traditions, the festivals, being tied to solar movements, have generally been steeped in solar mythology and symbolism, centred around the life cycles of the sun. Similarly, the Wiccan esbats are traditionally tied to the lunar cycles, together, they represent the most common celebrations in Wiccan-influenced forms of Neopaganism, especially in contemporary Witchcraft groups. Midwinter has been recognized as a significant turning point in the cycle since the late Stone Age. The ancient megalithic sites of Newgrange and Stonehenge, carefully aligned with the sunrise and sunset. The reversal of the Suns ebbing presence in the sky symbolizes the rebirth of the solar god, from Germanic to Roman tradition, this is the most important time of celebration. Practices vary, but sacrifices, feasting, and gift giving are common elements of Midwinter festivities, bringing sprigs and wreaths of evergreenery into the home and tree decorating are also common during this time. In Germanic traditions, this liminal festival marks the last month of the old year, in Roman traditions additional festivities take place during the six days leading up to Midwinter

5.
Cult image
–
In the practice of religion, a cult image is a human-made object that is venerated or worshipped for the deity, spirit or daemon that it embodies or represents. Cultus, the outward religious formulas of cult, often centers upon the treatment of cult images, religious images cover a wider range of all types of images made with a religious purpose, subject, or connection. In many contexts cult image specifically means the most important image in a temple, kept in an inner space, as opposed to what may be many other images decorating the temple. The term idol is often synonymous with cult image, but may be used especially of an image believed not just to depict or represent a deity or spirit. Sometimes the image is believed to have its own powers, to grant wishes or otherwise affect the world, in cultures where idolatry is not viewed negatively, the word idol is not generally seen as pejorative, such as in Indian English. Cult of images is the practice of worshipping or venerating religious or cult images representing divine figures, common in a number of ancient religions, the practice continues most prominently today in Hinduism. Assertions by others outside the group concerned that such beliefs are held by the group are however common. Cult images were a presence in Ancient Egypt, and still are in modern-day Kemetism. A common example of an image in ancient Egypt was the Apis Bull. The term is confined to the relatively small images, typically in gold. These images usually showed the god in their sacred barque or boat, the Parthenon contained a cult image of Athena, the Greek goddess of civilization and the noble side of war. This cult image, known as Athena Parthenos, was created by Phidias and this cult image was used for religious sacrifices at this Athenian temple. Hinduism allows for many forms of worship and therefore it neither prescribes nor proscribes worship of images, in Hinduism, a murti typically refers to an image that expresses a Divine Spirit. Meaning literally embodiment, a murti is a representation of a divinity, made usually of stone, wood, or metal, hindus consider a murti worthy of serving as a focus of divine worship only after the divine is invoked in it for the purpose of offering worship. The depiction of the divinity must reflect the gestures and proportions outlined in religious tradition, members of Abrahamic religions identify cult images as idols and their worship as idolatry, the worship of hollow forms. The avoidance of such a degrading paradox was expressed in the early Christian idea of miraculous icons that were not made by human hands, acheiropoietoi. Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christians make an exception for the veneration of image of saints, the word idol entered Middle English in the 13th century from Old French idole adapted in Ecclesiastical Latin from the Greek eidolon. Greek eidos was employed by Plato and the Platonists to signify perfect immutable forms, the local tribes, of the Arabian peninsula, came to this centre of commerce to place their idols in the Kaaba, in the process being charged tithes

6.
Frey
–
Freyr or Frey is one of the most important gods of Norse religion. The name is conjectured to derive from the Proto-Norse *frawjaz, lord, Freyr was associated with sacral kingship, virility and prosperity, with sunshine and fair weather, and was pictured as a phallic fertility god, Freyr is said to bestow peace and pleasure on mortals. Freyr, sometimes referred to as Yngvi-Freyr, was associated with Sweden and seen as an ancestor of the Swedish royal house. In the Icelandic books the Poetic Edda and the Prose Edda, Freyr is presented as one of the Vanir, the gods gave him Álfheimr, the realm of the Elves, as a teething present. He rides the shining dwarf-made boar Gullinbursti and possesses the ship Skíðblaðnir which always has a favorable breeze and can be folded together and he has the servants Skírnir, Byggvir and Beyla. The most extensive surviving Freyr myth relates Freyrs falling in love with the female jötunn Gerðr, eventually, she becomes his wife but first Freyr has to give away his magic sword which fights on its own if wise be he who wields it. Although deprived of this weapon, Freyr defeats the jötunn Beli with an antler, however, lacking his sword, Freyr will be killed by the fire jötunn Surtr during the events of Ragnarök. Like other Germanic deities, veneration of Freyr is revived in the period in Heathenry. Written around 1080, one of the oldest written sources on pre-Christian Scandinavian religious practices is Adam of Bremens Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum, Adam claimed to have access to first-hand accounts on pagan practices in Sweden. He refers to Freyr with the Latinized name Fricco and mentions that an image of him at Skara was destroyed by the Christian missionary and his description of the Temple at Uppsala gives some details on the god. Later in the account Adam states that when a marriage is performed a libation is made to the image of Fricco, historians are divided on the reliability of Adams account. While he is close in time to the events he describes he has an agenda to emphasize the role of the Archbishopric of Hamburg-Bremen in the Christianization of Scandinavia. His timeframe for the Christianization of Sweden conflicts with other sources, such as runic inscriptions, on the other hand, the existence of phallic idols was confirmed in 1904 with a find at Rällinge in Södermanland. When Snorri Sturluson was writing in 13th century Iceland, the indigenous Germanic gods were still remembered although they had not been openly worshiped for more than two centuries, in the Gylfaginning section of his Prose Edda, Snorri introduces Freyr as one of the major gods. This description has similarities to the account by Adam of Bremen. Adam assigns control of the weather and produce of the fields to Thor, Snorri also omits any explicitly sexual references in Freyrs description. Those discrepancies can be explained in several ways and it is possible that the Norse gods did not have exactly the same roles in Icelandic and Swedish paganism but it must also be remembered that Adam and Snorri were writing with different goals in mind. Either Snorri or Adam may also have had distorted information, the only extended myth related about Freyr in the Prose Edda is the story of his marriage

7.
New religious movement
–
NRMs can be novel in origin or part of a wider religion, in which case they are distinct from pre-existing denominations. Some NRMs deal with the challenges posed by the world by embracing individualism whereas others seek tightly knit collective means. Scholars have estimated that NRMs now number in the tens of thousands worldwide, with most of their members living in Asia, most have only a few members, some have thousands, and only very few have more than one million members. New religions have often faced a hostile reception from established religious organisations, in Western nations, a secular anti-cult movement and a Christian countercult movement emerged during the 1970s and 1980s to oppose emergent groups. In the 1970s, the field of new religions studies developed within the academic study of religion. There are now several organisations and peer-reviewed journals devoted to the subject. Scholars continue to try to reach definitions and define boundaries, there is no singular, agreed upon criteria for defining a new religious movement. However, the term usually requires that the group be both of recent origin and different from existing religions, there is debate as to what the term new should designate in this context. According to him, NRMs constituted those religious groups that have found, from the perspective of the dominant religious community, to be not just different. This definition would mean that which religions were regarded as NRMs would differ from country to country and would be open to change, as noted by scholars of religion Olav Hammer and Mikael Rothstein, new religions are just young religions. Melton has stated that those NRMs which were offshoots of older religious groups, tended to resemble their parent group far more than each other. One question that faces scholars of religion is when a new religious movement ceases to be new, some NRMs are strongly counter-cultural and alternative in the society they appear in, while others are far more similar to a societys established traditional religions. There are also problems in the use of religion within the new religious movements. Since at least the early 2000s, most sociologists of religion have used the new religious movement to avoid the pejorative undertones of terms like cult. These are words that have used in different ways by different groups. For instance, from the nineteenth century onward a number of sociologists used the terms cult, the term cult is used in reference to devotion or dedication to a particular person or place. For instance, within the Roman Catholic Church devotion to Mary and it is also used in non-religious contexts to refer to fandoms devoted to television shows like The Prisoner, The X-Files, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. In the United States, the term began to be used in a pejorative manner to refer to Spiritualism

8.
Paganism
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Paganism is a term that derives from Latin word pagan, which means nonparticipant, one excluded from a more distinguished, professional group. The term was used in the 4th century, by early Christian community, the term competed with polytheism already in use in Judaism, by Philo in the 1st century. Pagans and paganism was a pejorative for the same polytheistic group, Paganism has broadly connoted religion of the peasantry, and for much of its history a derogatory term. Alternate terms in Christian texts for the group was hellene. In and after the Middle Ages, paganism was a pejorative that was applied to any non-Abrahamic or unfamiliar religion, there has been much scholarly debate as to the origin of the term paganism, especially since no one before the 20th century self-identified as a pagan. In the 19th century, paganism was re-adopted as a self-descriptor by members of various artistic groups inspired by the ancient world. Forms of these religions, influenced by various historical pagan beliefs of pre-modern Europe, exist today and are known as contemporary or modern paganism, while most pagan religions express a worldview that is pantheistic, polytheistic, or animistic, there are some monotheistic pagans. It is crucial to stress right from the start that until the 20th century people did not call themselves pagans to describe the religion they practised, the notion of paganism, as it is generally understood today, was created by the early Christian Church. It was a label that Christians applied to others, one of the antitheses that were central to the process of Christian self-definition, as such, throughout history it was generally used in a derogatory sense. The term pagan is from Late Latin paganus, revived during the Renaissance and it is related to pangere and ultimately comes from Proto-Indo-European *pag-. The evolution occurred only in the Latin west, and in connection with the Latin church, elsewhere, Hellene or gentile remained the word for pagan, and paganos continued as a purely secular term, with overtones of the inferior and the commonplace. However, this idea has multiple problems, first, the words usage as a reference to non-Christians pre-dates that period in history. Second, paganism within the Roman Empire centered on cities, the concept of an urban Christianity as opposed to a rural paganism would not have occurred to Romans during Early Christianity. Third, unlike words such as rusticitas, paganus had not yet acquired the meanings used to explain why it would have been applied to pagans. Paganus more likely acquired its meaning in Christian nomenclature via Roman military jargon, Early Christians adopted military motifs and saw themselves as Milites Christi. As early as the 5th century, paganos was metaphorically used to persons outside the bounds of the Christian community. In response, Augustine of Hippo wrote De Civitate Dei Contra Paganos, in it, he contrasted the fallen city of Man to the city of God of which all Christians were ultimately citizens. Hence, the invaders were not of the city or rural

9.
Europe
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Europe is a continent that comprises the westernmost part of Eurasia. Europe is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, yet the non-oceanic borders of Europe—a concept dating back to classical antiquity—are arbitrary. Europe covers about 10,180,000 square kilometres, or 2% of the Earths surface, politically, Europe is divided into about fifty sovereign states of which the Russian Federation is the largest and most populous, spanning 39% of the continent and comprising 15% of its population. Europe had a population of about 740 million as of 2015. Further from the sea, seasonal differences are more noticeable than close to the coast, Europe, in particular ancient Greece, was the birthplace of Western civilization. The fall of the Western Roman Empire, during the period, marked the end of ancient history. Renaissance humanism, exploration, art, and science led to the modern era, from the Age of Discovery onwards, Europe played a predominant role in global affairs. Between the 16th and 20th centuries, European powers controlled at times the Americas, most of Africa, Oceania. The Industrial Revolution, which began in Great Britain at the end of the 18th century, gave rise to economic, cultural, and social change in Western Europe. During the Cold War, Europe was divided along the Iron Curtain between NATO in the west and the Warsaw Pact in the east, until the revolutions of 1989 and fall of the Berlin Wall. In 1955, the Council of Europe was formed following a speech by Sir Winston Churchill and it includes all states except for Belarus, Kazakhstan and Vatican City. Further European integration by some states led to the formation of the European Union, the EU originated in Western Europe but has been expanding eastward since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. The European Anthem is Ode to Joy and states celebrate peace, in classical Greek mythology, Europa is the name of either a Phoenician princess or of a queen of Crete. The name contains the elements εὐρύς, wide, broad and ὤψ eye, broad has been an epithet of Earth herself in the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European religion and the poetry devoted to it. For the second part also the divine attributes of grey-eyed Athena or ox-eyed Hera. The same naming motive according to cartographic convention appears in Greek Ανατολή, Martin Litchfield West stated that phonologically, the match between Europas name and any form of the Semitic word is very poor. Next to these there is also a Proto-Indo-European root *h1regʷos, meaning darkness. Most major world languages use words derived from Eurṓpē or Europa to refer to the continent, in some Turkic languages the originally Persian name Frangistan is used casually in referring to much of Europe, besides official names such as Avrupa or Evropa

10.
North Africa
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North Africa or Northern Africa is the northernmost region of Africa. The United Nationss definition of Northern Africa is, Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Sudan, Tunisia, the countries of Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, and Libya are often collectively referred to as the Maghreb, which is the Arabic word for sunset. Egypt lies to the northeast and encompasses part of West Asia, while Sudan is situated on the edge of the Sahel, Egypt is a transcontinental country because of the Sinai Peninsula, which geographically lies in Western Asia. North Africa also includes a number of Spanish possessions, the Canary Islands and Madeira in the North Atlantic Ocean northwest of the African mainland are included in considerations of the region. From 3500 BC, following the abrupt desertification of the Sahara due to changes in the Earths orbit. The Islamic influence in the area is significant, and North Africa is a major part of the Muslim world. Some researchers have postulated that North Africa rather than East Africa served as the point for the modern humans who first trekked out of the continent in the Out of Africa migration. The Atlas Mountains extend across much of Morocco, northern Algeria and Tunisia, are part of the mountain system that also runs through much of Southern Europe. They recede to the south and east, becoming a steppe landscape before meeting the Sahara desert, the sediments of the Sahara overlie an ancient plateau of crystalline rock, some of which is more than four billion years old. Sheltered valleys in the Atlas Mountains, the Nile Valley and Delta, a wide variety of valuable crops including cereals, rice and cotton, and woods such as cedar and cork, are grown. Typical Mediterranean crops, such as olives, figs, dates and citrus fruits, the Nile Valley is particularly fertile, and most of the population in Egypt and Sudan live close to the river. Elsewhere, irrigation is essential to improve yields on the desert margins. The inhabitants of Saharan Africa are generally divided in a manner corresponding to the principal geographic regions of North Africa, the Maghreb, the Nile valley. The edge of the Sahel, to the south of Egypt has mainly been inhabited by Nubians, Ancient Egyptians record extensive contact in their Western desert with people that appear to have been Berber or proto-Berber, as well as Nubians from the south. They have contributed to the Arabized Berber populations, the official language or one of the official languages in all of the countries in North Africa is Arabic. The people of the Maghreb and the Sahara regions speak Berber languages and several varieties of Arabic, the Arabic and Berber languages are distantly related, both being members of the Afroasiatic language family. The Tuareg Berber languages are more conservative than those of the coastal cities. Over the years, Berbers have been influenced by contact with cultures, Greeks, Phoenicians, Egyptians, Romans, Vandals, Arabs, Europeans

11.
Near East
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The Near East is a geographical term that roughly encompasses Western Asia. Despite having varying definitions within different academic circles, the term was applied to the maximum extent of the Ottoman Empire. The term has fallen into disuse in English and has replaced by the terms Middle East. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations defines the region similarly, but also includes Afghanistan while excluding the countries of North Africa and the Palestinian territories. Up until 1912 the Ottomans retained a band of territory including Albania, Macedonia and Southern Thrace, the Ottoman Empire, believed to be about to collapse, was portrayed in the press as the sick man of Europe. The Balkan states, with the exception of Bosnia and Albania, were primarily Christian. Starting in 1894 the Ottomans struck at the Armenians on the grounds that they were a non-Muslim people. The Hamidian Massacres aroused the indignation of the entire Christian world, in the United States the now aging Julia Ward Howe, author of the Battle Hymn of the Republic, leaped into the war of words and joined the Red Cross. Relations of minorities within the Ottoman Empire and the disposition of former Ottoman lands became known as the Eastern Question and it now became relevant to define the east of the eastern question. In about the middle of the 19th century Near East came into use to describe part of the east closest to Europe. The term Far East appeared contemporaneously meaning Japan, China, Korea, Indonesia, near East applied to what had been mainly known as the Levant, which was in the jurisdiction of the Ottoman Porte, or government. Those who used the term had little choice about its meaning and they could not set foot on most of the shores of the southern and central Mediterranean from the Gulf of Sidra to Albania without permits from the Ottoman Empire. Some regions beyond the Ottoman Porte were included, one was North Africa west of Egypt. It was occupied by piratical kingdoms of the Barbary Coast, de facto independent since the 18th century, formerly part of the empire at its apogee. Iran was included because it could not easily be reached except through the Ottoman Empire or neighboring Russia, in the 1890s the term tended to focus on the conflicts in the Balkan states and Armenia. The demise of the man of Europe left considerable confusion as to what was to be meant by Near East. It is now used only in historical contexts, to describe the countries of Western Asia from the Mediterranean to Iran. There is, in short, no universally understood fixed inventory of nations and they appear together in the journals of the mid-19th century

12.
Religious text
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Religious texts are texts which religious traditions consider to be central to their religious practice or set of beliefs. It is not possible to create an exhaustive list of religious texts, one of the oldest known religious texts is the Kesh Temple Hymn of Ancient Sumer, a set of inscribed clay tablets which scholars typically date around 2600 BCE. For example, the content of a Protestant Bible may differ from the content of a Catholic Bible, the word canon comes from the Sumerian word meaning standard. Hierographology is the study of sacred texts, the following is an in-exhaustive list of links to specific religious texts which may be used for further, more in-depth study. The writings of Franklin Albert Jones a. k. a, some denominations also include the Apocrypha. For Protestantism, this is the 66-book canon - the Jewish Tanakh of 24 books divided differently, some denominations also include the 15 books of the Apocrypha between the Old Testament and the New Testament, for a total of 81 books. For Catholicism, this includes seven deuterocanonical books in the Old Testament for a total of 73 books, called the Canon of Trent. For the Eastern Orthodox Church, this includes the anagignoskomena, which consist of the Catholic deuterocanon, plus 3 Maccabees, Psalm 151, the Prayer of Manasseh,4 Maccabees is considered to be canonical by the Georgian Orthodox Church. Some Syriac churches accept the Letter of Baruch as scripture, christian Scientists The Bible Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy. This textbook, along with the Bible, serves as the permanent impersonal pastor of the church, the Community of Christ uses the Joseph Smith Translation, which it calls the Inspired Version, as well as updated modern translations. Seventh-day Adventists The Bible The writings of Ellen White are held to a status, though not equal with the Bible. Also known as the Gospel of Mani and The Living Gospel the Treasure of Life the Pragmateia the Book of Mysteries The Book of Giants the Epistles the Psalms, the Shabuhragan The Arzhang The Kephalaia, Discourses, found in Coptic translation. Odù Ifá Jaap Verduijns Odu Ifa Collection Primary religious texts, that is, the Avesta collection, The Yasna, the Visperad, a collection of supplements to the Yasna. The Yashts, hymns in honor of the divinities, the Vendidad, describes the various forms of evil spirits and ways to confound them. Shorter texts and prayers, the Yashts the five Nyaishes, the Sirozeh, there are some 60 secondary religious texts, none of which are considered scripture. The Khordeh Avesta, Zoroastrian prayer book for lay people from the Avesta, religious full text online library Ancient texts library Internet Sacred Text Archive

13.
Religious denomination
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A religious denomination is a subgroup within a religion that operates under a common name, tradition, and identity. The term refers to the various Christian denominations and it is also used to describe the four branches of Judaism. Within Islam, it can refer to the branches or sects, as well as their various subdivisions such as sub-sects, schools of jurisprudence, schools of theology, the worlds largest religious denomination is Sunni Islam, followed by Roman Catholicism. A Christian denomination is a term for a distinct religious body identified by traits such as a common name, structure, leadership. Individual bodies, however, may use alternative terms to describe themselves, groups of denominations often sharing broadly similar beliefs, practices, and historical ties are known as branches of Christianity. Jewish religious movements, sometimes called denominations or branches, include different groups which have developed among Jews from ancient times, today, the main division is between the Orthodox, Reform, and Conservative lines, with several smaller movements alongside them. This threefold denominational structure is present in the United States. The movements differ in their views on various issues and these issues include the level of observance, the methodology for interpreting and understanding Jewish law, biblical authorship, textual criticism, and the nature or role of the messiah. Across these movements there are marked differences in liturgy, especially in the language in services are conducted. In Hinduism, the deity or philosophical belief identifies a denomination. The major denominations include Shaivism, Shaktism, Vaishnavism and Smartism, historically, Islam was divided into three major sects well known as Sunni, Khawarij and Shī‘ah. Nowadays, Sunnis constitute more than 85% of the overall Muslim population while the Shias are slightly more than 12%, today, many of the Shia sects are extinct. The major surviving Imamah-Muslim Sects are Usulism, Nizari Ismailism, Alevism, on the other hand, new Muslim sects like African American Muslims, Ahmadi Muslims, non-denominational Muslims, Quranist Muslims and Wahhabis were later independently developed. The term multi-denominational may describe an event that includes several religious denominations from sometimes unrelated religious groups. Many civic events include religious portions led by representatives from several denominations to be as inclusive or representational as possible of the expected population or audience. Schools of Buddhism Christian denomination Hindu denominations Islamic denominations Jewish denominations Non-denominational Schism Sociological classifications of religious movements

14.
Eclecticism
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However, this is often without conventions or rules dictating how or which theories were combined. It can sometimes seem inelegant or lacking in simplicity, and eclectics are sometimes criticized for lack of consistency in their thinking and it is, however, common in many fields of study. For example, most psychologists accept certain aspects of behaviorism, out of this collected material they constructed their new system of philosophy. The term comes from the Greek ἐκλεκτικός, literally choosing the best, well known eclectics in Greek philosophy were the Stoics Panaetius and Posidonius, and the New Academics Carneades and Philo of Larissa. Among the Romans, Cicero was thoroughly eclectic, as he united the Peripatetic, Stoic, other eclectics included Varro and Seneca. The term eclecticism is used to describe the combination, in a work, of elements from different historical styles, chiefly in architecture and, by implication, in the fine. The simplest definition of the term—that every work of art represents the combination of a variety of influences—is so basic as to be of little use, some martial arts can be described as eclectic in the sense that they borrow techniques from a wide variety of other martial arts. In textual criticism, eclecticism is the practice of examining a number of text witnesses. The result of the process is a text with readings drawn from many witnesses, in a purely eclectic approach, no single witness is theoretically favored. Instead, the critic forms opinions about individual witnesses, relying on external and internal evidence. Since the mid-19th century, eclecticism, in there is no a priori bias to a single manuscript, has been the dominant method of editing the Greek text of the New Testament. Even so, the oldest manuscripts, being of the Alexandrian text-type, are the most favored, in ancient philosophy, Eclectics use elements from multiple philosophies, texts, life experiences and their own philosophical ideas. These ideas include life as connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, Antiochus of Ascalon, was the pupil of Philo of Larissa, and the teacher of Cicero. Through his influence, Platonism made the transition from New Academy skepticism to Eclecticism, whereas Philo had still adhered to the doctrine that there is nothing absolutely certain, Antiochus returned to a pronounced dogmatism. Among other objections to skepticism, was the consideration that without firm convictions no rational content of life is possible and he expounded the Academic, Peripatetic, and Stoic systems in such a way as to show that these three schools deviate from one another only in minor points. He himself was interested in ethics, in which he tried to find a middle way between Zeno, Aristotle and Plato. For instance, he said that virtue suffices for happiness, but for the highest grade of happiness bodily and this eclectic tendency was favoured by the lack of dogmatic works by Plato. Middle Platonism was promoted by the necessity of considering the main theories of the schools of philosophy, such as the Aristotelian logic

15.
Polytheism
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Polytheism is the worship of or belief in multiple deities, which are usually assembled into a pantheon of gods and goddesses, along with their own religions and rituals. Polytheism is a type of theism, within theism, it contrasts with monotheism, the belief in a singular God, in most cases transcendent. Polytheists do not always worship all the gods equally, but they can be henotheists, other polytheists can be kathenotheists, worshiping different deities at different times. Polytheism was the form of religion during the Bronze Age and Iron Age up to the Axial Age and the development of Abrahamic religions. Important polytheistic religions practiced today include Chinese traditional religion, Hinduism, Japanese Shinto, the term comes from the Greek πολύ poly and θεός theos and was first invented by the Jewish writer Philo of Alexandria to argue with the Greeks. When Christianity spread throughout Europe and the Mediterranean, non-Christians were just called Gentiles or pagans or by the pejorative term idolaters. The modern usage of the term is first revived in French through Jean Bodin in 1580, a central, main division in polytheism is between soft polytheism and hard polytheism. Hard polytheism is the belief that gods are distinct, separate, real divine beings, hard polytheists reject the idea that all gods are one god. Hard polytheists do not necessarily consider the gods of all cultures as being equally real, Polytheism cannot be cleanly separated from the animist beliefs prevalent in most folk religions. The gods of polytheism are in cases the highest order of a continuum of supernatural beings or spirits. In some cases these spirits are divided into celestial or chthonic classes, since divinity is intellectual, and all intellect returns into itself, this myth expresses in allegory the essence of divinity. Myths may be regarded physically when they express the activities of gods in the world, the psychological way is to regard the activities of the soul itself and or the souls acts of thought. The material is to regard material objects to actually be gods, for example, to call the earth Gaia, ocean Okeanos, Some well-known historical polytheistic pantheons include the Sumerian gods and the Egyptian gods, and the classical-attested pantheon which includes the ancient Greek religion and Roman religion. Post-classical polytheistic religions include Norse Æsir and Vanir, the Yoruba Orisha, the Aztec gods, an example of a religious notion from this shared past is the concept of *dyēus, which is attested in several distinct religious systems. In many civilizations, pantheons tended to grow over time, deities first worshipped as the patrons of cities or places came to be collected together as empires extended over larger territories. Conquests could lead to the subordination of the elder cultures pantheon to a one, as in the Greek Titanomachia. Most ancient belief systems held that gods influenced human lives, epicurus believed that these gods were material, human-like, and that they inhabited the empty spaces between worlds. Though it is suggested that Hestia stepped down when Dionysus was invited to Mount Olympus, robert Graves The Greek Myths cites two sources that obviously do not suggest Hestia surrendered her seat, though he suggests she did

16.
Animism
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Animism is the worlds oldest religion. Animism teaches that objects, places, and creatures all possess distinctive spiritual qualities, potentially, animism perceives all things—animals, plants, rocks, rivers, weather systems, human handiwork, and perhaps even words—as animate and alive. Animism is the oldest known type of system in the world that even predates paganism. It is still practiced in a variety of forms in traditional societies. Although each culture has its own different mythologies and rituals, animism is said to describe the most common, foundational thread of indigenous peoples spiritual or supernatural perspectives. The currently accepted definition of animism was only developed in the late 19th century by Sir Edward Tylor, Animism may further attribute souls to abstract concepts such as words, true names, or metaphors in mythology. Some members of the world also consider themselves animists. Earlier anthropological perspectives – since termed the old animism – were concerned with knowledge surrounding what is alive, the old animism assumed that animists were individuals who were unable to understand the difference between persons and things. Critics of the old animism have accused it of preserving colonialist and dualist worldviews, according to Tylor, animism often includes an idea of pervading life and will in nature, i. e. a belief that natural objects other than humans have souls. This formulation was little different from that proposed by Auguste Comte as fetishism, thus, for Tylor, animism was fundamentally seen as a mistake, a basic error from which all religion grew. The earliest known usage in English appeared in 1819, Tylors definition of animism was a part of a growing international debate on the nature of primitive society by lawyers, theologians, and philologists. The debate defined the field of research of a new science – anthropology and their religion was animism – the belief that natural species and objects had souls. With the development of property, these descent groups were displaced by the emergence of the territorial state. These rituals and beliefs eventually evolved over time into the vast array of developed religions, in 1869, the Edinburgh lawyer, John Ferguson McLellan, argued that the animistic thinking evident in fetishism gave rise to a religion he named Totemism. Primitive people believed, he argued, that they were descended of the species as their totemic animal. Subsequent debate by the armchair anthropologists remained focused on totemism rather than animism, indeed, anthropologists have commonly avoided the issue of Animism and even the term itself rather than revisit this prevalent notion in light of their new and rich ethnographies. Certain indigenous religious groups such as the Australian Aboriginals are more typically totemic, stewart Guthrie saw animism – or attribution as he preferred it – as an evolutionary strategy to aid survival. He argued that humans and other animal species view inanimate objects as potentially alive as a means of being constantly on guard against potential threats

17.
Pantheism
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Pantheism is the belief that all reality is identical with divinity, or that everything composes an all-encompassing, immanent god. Pantheists thus do not believe in a personal or anthropomorphic god. The term pantheism was not coined until after Spinozas death, and his work, Ethics, was the major source from which Western pantheism spread. Pantheistic concepts may date back thousands of years, and some religions in the East continue to contain pantheistic elements, Pantheism derives from the Greek πᾶν pan and θεός theos. There are a variety of definitions of pantheism, some consider it a theological and philosophical position concerning God. As a religious position, some describe pantheism as the polar opposite of atheism, from this standpoint, pantheism is the view that everything is part of an all-encompassing, immanent God. All forms of reality may then be considered either modes of that Being, some hold that pantheism is a non-religious philosophical position. To them, pantheism is the view that the Universe and God are identical, pantheistic tendencies existed in a number of early Gnostic groups, with pantheistic thought appearing throughout the Middle Ages. These included a section of Johannes Scotus Eriugenas 9th-century work De divisione naturae, the Roman Catholic Church has long regarded pantheistic ideas as heresy. Giordano Bruno, an Italian monk who evangelized about an immanent and he has since become known as a celebrated pantheist and martyr of science. Bruno influenced many later thinkers including Baruch Spinoza, in the West, pantheism was formalized as a separate theology and philosophy based on the work of the 17th-century philosopher Baruch Spinoza. Spinoza was a Dutch philosopher of Sephardi Portuguese origin, whose book Ethics was an answer to Descartes famous dualist theory that the body, Spinoza held the monist view that the two are the same, and monism is a fundamental part of his philosophy. He was described as a God-intoxicated man, and used the word God to describe the unity of all substance, although the term pantheism was not coined until after his death, Spinoza is regarded as its most celebrated advocate. His work, Ethics, was the source from which Western pantheism spread. The breadth and importance of Spinozas work was not fully realized until years after his death. Spinozas magnum opus, the posthumous Ethics, in which he opposed Descartes mind–body dualism, has earned him recognition as one of Western philosophys most important thinkers, Hegel said, You are either a Spinozist or not a philosopher at all. His philosophical accomplishments and moral character prompted 20th-century philosopher Gilles Deleuze to name him the prince of philosophers, Spinoza was raised in the Portuguese Jewish community in Amsterdam. He developed highly controversial ideas regarding the authenticity of the Hebrew Bible, the Jewish religious authorities issued a cherem against him, effectively excluding him from Jewish society at age 23

18.
Christianity
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Christianity is a Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ, who serves as the focal point for the religion. It is the worlds largest religion, with over 2.4 billion followers, or 33% of the global population, Christians believe that Jesus is the Son of God and the savior of humanity whose coming as the Messiah was prophesied in the Old Testament. Christian theology is summarized in creeds such as the Apostles Creed and his incarnation, earthly ministry, crucifixion, and resurrection are often referred to as the gospel, meaning good news. The term gospel also refers to accounts of Jesuss life and teaching, four of which—Matthew, Mark, Luke. Christianity is an Abrahamic religion that began as a Second Temple Judaic sect in the mid-1st century, following the Age of Discovery, Christianity spread to the Americas, Australasia, sub-Saharan Africa, and the rest of the world through missionary work and colonization. Christianity has played a prominent role in the shaping of Western civilization, throughout its history, Christianity has weathered schisms and theological disputes that have resulted in many distinct churches and denominations. Worldwide, the three largest branches of Christianity are the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, and the denominations of Protestantism. There are many important differences of interpretation and opinion of the Bible, concise doctrinal statements or confessions of religious beliefs are known as creeds. They began as baptismal formulae and were expanded during the Christological controversies of the 4th and 5th centuries to become statements of faith. Many evangelical Protestants reject creeds as definitive statements of faith, even agreeing with some or all of the substance of the creeds. The Baptists have been non-creedal in that they have not sought to establish binding authoritative confessions of faith on one another. Also rejecting creeds are groups with roots in the Restoration Movement, such as the Christian Church, the Evangelical Christian Church in Canada, the Apostles Creed is the most widely accepted statement of the articles of Christian faith. It is also used by Presbyterians, Methodists, and Congregationalists and this particular creed was developed between the 2nd and 9th centuries. Its central doctrines are those of the Trinity and God the Creator, each of the doctrines found in this creed can be traced to statements current in the apostolic period. The creed was used as a summary of Christian doctrine for baptismal candidates in the churches of Rome. Most Christians accept the use of creeds, and subscribe to at least one of the mentioned above. The central tenet of Christianity is the belief in Jesus as the Son of God, Christians believe that Jesus, as the Messiah, was anointed by God as savior of humanity, and hold that Jesus coming was the fulfillment of messianic prophecies of the Old Testament. The Christian concept of the Messiah differs significantly from the contemporary Jewish concept, Jesus, having become fully human, suffered the pains and temptations of a mortal man, but did not sin

19.
New Age
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The New Age is a term applied to a range of spiritual or religious beliefs and practices that developed in Western nations during the 1970s. Precise scholarly definitions of the New Age differ in their emphasis, although analytically often considered to be religious, those involved in it typically prefer the designation of spiritual and rarely use the term New Age themselves. Many scholars of the subject refer to it as the New Age movement, although others contest this term, such prominent occult influences include the work of Emanuel Swedenborg and Franz Mesmer, as well as the ideas of Spiritualism, New Thought, and Theosophy. Although the exact origins of the phenomenon remain contested, it is agreed that it developed in the 1970s and it expanded and grew largely in the 1980s and 1990s, in particular within the United States. By the start of the 21st century, the term New Age was increasingly rejected within this milieu, despite its highly eclectic nature, a number of beliefs commonly found within the New Age have been identified. Theologically, the New Age typically adopts a belief in a form of divinity which imbues all of the universe. There is thus a strong emphasis on the authority of the self. This is accompanied by a belief in a wide variety of semi-divine non-human entities, such as angels and masters, with whom humans can communicate. There is also a focus on healing, particularly using forms of alternative medicine. Those involved in the New Age have been primarily from middle, the New Age has generated criticism from established Christian organisations as well as modern Pagan and indigenous communities. From the 1990s onward, the New Age became the subject of research by scholars of religious studies. The New Age phenomenon has proved difficult to define, with much scholarly disagreement as to its scope, the scholars Steven J. Sutcliffe and Ingvild Sælid Gilhus have even suggested that it remains among the most disputed of categories in the study of religion. According to Hammer, this New Age was a fluid and fuzzy cultic milieu and he thus argued against the idea that the New Age could be considered a unified ideology or Weltanschauung, although he believed that it could be considered a more of less unified movement. Conversely, various scholars have suggested that the New Age is insufficiently homogenous to be regarded as a singular movement. There is no authority within the New Age phenomenon that can determine what counts as New Age. Many of those groups and individuals who could analytically be categorised as part of the New Age reject the term New Age in reference to themselves, some even express active hostility to the term. Rather than terming themselves New Agers, those involved in this milieu commonly describe themselves as spiritual seekers, other figures have argued that the sheer diversity of the New Age renders it too problematic for such use. In discussing the New Age, academics have varyingly referred to New Age spirituality and those involved in the New Age rarely consider it to be religion—negatively associating that term solely with organized religion—and instead describe their practices as spirituality

20.
Pagan studies
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In 2004, a peer-reviewed academic journal devoted to the discipline, The Pomegranate, began publication. Many books on the subject have been published by a variety of different academic publishing companies, at the same time, many academics involved in Pagan studies are practicing Pagans themselves, bringing an insiders perspective to their approaches. The first international conference on the subject of Pagan studies was held at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. It had been organised by two British religious studies scholars, Graham Harvey and Charlotte Hardman, titled Nature Religion Today, Western Paganism, Shamanism and Esotericism in the 1990s, it led to the publication of an academic anthology, Nature Religion Today, Paganism in the Modern World. That same year saw the beginnings of The Pomegranate, which would later be transformed into an academic journal. Ethan Doyle White noted that as Pagan studies reached its year, it came under increasing pressure to explain itself. In 1999, the American sociologist Helen A. Berger of West Chester University published A Community of Witches, in 2005, ABC-CLIO published an anthology entitled Modern Paganism in World Cultures, which was edited by the American religious studies scholar Michael F. Strmiska. The results of his study would only be published in 1991 and this would later be rewritten and republished in 2007 as Inventing Witchcraft. He concluded that at the time, Pagan studies scholars would be at a loss to convey, the current situation, in which widely differing definitions are being used in tandem, is clearly unsustainable. Religious studies scholar Markus Altena Davidsen published a critique of the field in 2012, ethan Doyle White responded with a paper in which he asserted that while coherant and informative, there were nonetheless significant flaws in Davidsens approach. Arguing that the Handbook of Contemporary Paganism was not as symptomatic of the field as Davidsen had assumed, Doyle White then argued that Davidsens division of scholars into firmly insider and outsider categories was problematic as scholars of Pagan studies like Sabina Magliocco straddled both boundaries. The relationship between Pagan studies scholars and some practicing Pagans has at times been strained and she furthermore argued that some of those dissatisfied Pagans lashed out against academics as a result, particularly on the internet. Drawing Down the Moon, Witches, Druids, Goddess-Worshippers and Other Pagans in America, a Community of Witches, Contemporary Neo-Paganism and Witchcraft in the United States. Columbia, South Carolina, University of South Carolina Press, Teenage Witches, Magical Youth and the Search for the Self. New Brunswick, New Jersey and London, Rutgers International Press, nine Worlds of Seid-Magic, Ecstasy and Neo-Shamanism in Northern European Paganism. Blain, Jenny, Ezzy, Douglas, Harvey, Graham, Sacred Sites Contested Rites/Rights, Pagan Engagements with Archaeological Monuments. Brighton and Portland, Sussex Academic Press and her Hidden Children, The Rise of Wicca and Paganism in America. Cowan, Douglas E. Cyberhenge, Modern Pagans on the Internet, gods of the Blood, The Pagan Revival and White Separatism

21.
Rodnover
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Slavic neopaganism or the Slavic native faith is the contemporary continuation of the ethnic religion of the Slavic peoples. It is characterised by a pantheist and polytheist theology, a focus on Slavic culture and folklore, in English sources the religion is often called Ridnoviry and its followers Ridnovirs. The term Rodnovery, from Russian, is also in use, some Slavic native faith groups also incorporate elements of Hinduism and Vedism. Rodnovery comes from Slavic compounds adapted to English, made up of родная or родной, meaning native, plus вера, Rodnovers generally dont refuse to be categorised as pagans, but virtually none accept the prefix neo-. Rodnovery can also be anglicised as Rodism or Rodianism, which drops the vera suffix, thus meaning simply religion of the Rod, religion of the Root, according to this view Rodnovery is a word that embodies the central concept of the Slavic native faith. Other names that are in use in Russia for the religion, although popular, are славянство or Slavianstvo, which in English is Slavism or Slavianism. The first name has been used by a community in Moscow maintaining that the term Slav originally means pious, the basic structure of a temple of the Slavic native faith is constituted by a sacred precinct at the centre of which are placed the images of the gods enshrined. There are many temples throughout Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. A large, formal one is projected to be built in Khabarovsk, the Slavic Kremlin, a centre of the Yarga Rodnover religious network in the Podolsky District of Moscow Oblast, hosts a typical wooden temple among its buildings. In 2015 the Temple of the Fire of Svarozich, in the form of a building, was opened by the Union of Slavic Rodnover Communities in Krasotynka. Unlike earlier authors, Dołęga-Chodakowski identified Christianity as an influence on national character. It was also rife with literary hoaxes and fakes, such as the Kraledvorsky Manuscript, the Prillwitz idols, as in other European countries, many Slavic nations developed their own Slavic faith movements in the first half of the 20th century. The German and Polish groups were already referred to as neopagan in press articles before World War II. Alarmed by the growth of Rodnovery in Slavic countries, exponents of the Orthodox Church gathered on 19 September 2015 launching a smartphone application of apologetics against the movement. Ecology and respect for nature is а prevalent theme, piotr Wiench has claimed that nationalism is less important than ecology to most groups, describing a movement inspired by nature-based spirituality. Many groups use extensive symbolism drawn from the world and many hold their religious ceremonies outdoors in sparsely populated areas. Wiench mentions one group that dances to drums in the forest near Poznań, aitamurto describes a number of common themes, such as nationalism, concern for the environment, warrior themes and indigenous values. Her analysis focuses primarily on Russian groups, which she describes as heterogenous and ranging from pacifism to xenophobia, Rodnovery in Belarus has ties in politics, particularly within the pro-Russian political scene

22.
Abrahamic religion
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Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are the largest Abrahamic religions in terms of numbers of adherents. As of 2005, estimates classified 54% of the population as adherents of an Abrahamic religion, about 32% as adherents of other religions. Christianity claims 33% of the population, Islam has 21%, Judaism has 0. 2%. It has been suggested that the phrase, Abrahamic religion, may mean that all these religions come from one spiritual source. Christians refer to Abraham as a father in faith, there is an Islamic religious term, Millat Ibrahim, indicating that Islam sees itself as having practices tied to the traditions of Abraham. Jewish tradition claims descent from Abraham, and adherents follow his practices and it is the Islamic tradition that Muhammad, as an Arab, is descended from Abrahams son Ishmael. Jewish tradition also equates the descendants of Ishmael, Ishmaelites, with Arabs, as the descendants of Isaac by Jacob, who was also later known as Israel, are the Israelites. The Báb, regarded by Baháís as a predecessor to Baháulláh, was a Sayyid, or a descendant of Muhammad. Tradition also holds that Baháulláh is a descendant of Abraham through his third wife, while there is commonality among the religions, in large measure their shared ancestry is peripheral to their respective foundational beliefs and thus conceals crucial differences. For example, the common Christian beliefs of Incarnation, Trinity, there are key beliefs in both Islam and Judaism that are not shared by most of Christianity, and key beliefs of Islam, Christianity, and the Baháí Faith not shared by Judaism. Judaism regards itself as the religion of the descendants of Jacob and it has a strictly unitary view of God, and the central holy book for almost all branches is the Masoretic Text as elucidated in the Oral Torah. In the 19th century and 20th centuries Judaism developed a number of branches, of which the most significant are Orthodox, Conservative. Christianity began as a sect of Judaism in the Mediterranean Basin of the first century CE and evolved into a separate religion—Christianity—with distinctive beliefs, Jesus is the central figure of Christianity, considered by almost all denominations to be God the Son, one person of the Trinity. The Christian biblical canons are usually held to be the ultimate authority, over many centuries, Christianity divided into three main branches, dozens of significant denominations, and hundreds of smaller ones. Islam arose in the Arabian Peninsula in the 7th century CE with a unitary view of God. Muslims hold the Quran to be the authority, as revealed and elucidated through the teachings and practices of a central. The Islamic faith consider all prophets and messengers from Adam through the messenger to carry the same Islamic monotheistic principles. Soon after its founding Islam split into two branches, each of which now have a number of denominations

23.
Dharmic religion
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These religions are also classified as Eastern religions. Although Indian religions are connected through the history of India, they constitute a wide range of religious communities, evidence attesting to prehistoric religion in the Indian subcontinent derives from scattered Mesolithic rock paintings. The Harappan people of the Indus Valley Civilisation, which lasted from 3300 to 1300 BCE, had an early urbanised culture which predates the Vedic religion. The documented history of Indian religions begins with the historical Vedic religion, the practices of the early Indo-Iranians. The period of the composition, redaction and commentary of these texts is known as the Vedic period, the Reform or Shramanic Period between 800–200 BCE marks a turning point between the Vedic religion and Hindu religions. This period also saw the writing of the Upanishads and the rise of Vedanta, the early Islamic period also gave rise to new movements. Sikhism was founded in the 15th century on the teachings of Guru Nanak, the vast majority of its adherents originate in the Punjab region. With the colonial dominance of the British a reinterpretation and synthesis of Hinduism arose, james Mill, in his The History of British India, distinguished three phases in the history of India, namely Hindu, Muslim and British civilisations. This periodisation has been criticised, for the misconceptions it has given rise to, another periodisation is the division into ancient, classical, medieval and modern periods, although this periodization has also received criticism. The division in Ancient-Medieval-Modern overlooks the fact that the Muslim-conquests took place between the eight and the century, while the south was never completely conquered. According to Thapar, a periodisation could also be based on significant social and economic changes, smart and Michaels seem to follow Mills periodisation, while Flood and Muesse follow the ancient, classical, mediaeval and modern periods periodisation. Evidence attesting to prehistoric religion in the Indian subcontinent derives from scattered Mesolithic rock paintings such as at Bhimbetka, depicting dances, neolithic agriculturalists inhabiting the Indus River Valley buried their dead in a manner suggestive of spiritual practices that incorporated notions of an afterlife and belief in magic. Marshalls interpretations have been debated, and sometimes disputed over the following decades. One Indus valley seal shows a seated, possibly ithyphallic and tricephalic, figure with a horned headdress, surrounded by animals. Marshall identified the figure as a form of the Hindu god Shiva, who is associated with asceticism, yoga, and linga, regarded as a lord of animals. The seal has hence come to be known as the Pashupati Seal, after Pashupati, while Marshalls work has earned some support, many critics and even supporters have raised several objections. Doris Srinivasan has argued that the figure does not have three faces, or yogic posture, and that in Vedic literature Rudra was not a protector of wild animals. Despite the criticisms of Marshalls association of the seal with a proto-Shiva icon, historians like Heinrich Zimmer, Thomas McEvilley are of the opinion that there exists some link between first Jain Tirthankara Rishabha & Indus Valley civilisation

24.
Wouter Hanegraaff
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Wouter Jacobus Hanegraaff is full professor of History of Hermetic Philosophy and related currents at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. He served as the first President of the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism from 2005 to 2013, Hanegraaff was raised as the son of a theologian. He originally studied classical guitar at the Municipal Conservatory at Zwolle from 1982 to 1987, from 1992 to 1996 he was a Research Fellow at the department for the Study of Religions at the University of Utrecht. From 1996 to 1999 Hanegraaff held a fellowship from the Dutch Association for Scientific Research. In 1999 he became professor of History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents at the University of Amsterdam. From 2002 to 2006 he has been president of the Dutch Society for the Study of Religion, in 2006 he was elected member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, and he is now an hononrary member of the ESSWE. His dissertation New Age Religion and Western Culture, Esotericism in the Mirror of Secular Thought was published by Brill in 1996, two years later a USA paperback version was published by State University of New York Press. This work constitutes one of the first non-polemical academic reviews of the New Age movement and it covers important authors, themes, aspects of New Age belief, and finally looks at the New Age in the context of traditional Western esotericism. It has helped pave the way for a number of studies that have appeared in various journals. Hanegraaffs second book-length publication was Lodovico Lazzarelli, The Hermetic Writings, Lazzarelli was treated by Frances A. Yates as a secondary figure, but the Hanegraaff-Bouthoorn book argues that Yatess grand narrative of the Hermetic Tradition needs to be revised. It analyzes Swedenborgs worldview as expounded in his work, and discusses the early German reception history by Friedrich Christoph Oetinger. Oetinger originally saw Swedenborg as an ally but eventually criticized his idealist philosophy as the antithesis of his own incarnational theosophy, Kant took Swedenborg much more seriously than is commonly assumed, and their basic ontological and epistemological perspectives are remarkably compatible. Hanegraaffs second full-scale monograph Esotericism and the Academy, Rejected Knowledge in Western Culture was published by Cambridge University Press in 2012 and he argues that our common perspectives on Western intellectual and cultural history are based upon a highly selective eclecticist historiography grounded in Enlightenment ideologies. One year later, Hanegraaff published a textbook, Western Esotericism. The book ends with an annotated bibliography, apart from these books, Hanegraaff has published numerous articles in academic journals and collective volumes. He is an editor of Aries, Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism. He is member of the board of the journals Religion, Numen, Religion Compass and Esoterica. -----New Age Religion and Western Culture, Esotericism in the Mirror of Secular Thought, Brill, Leiden 1996, State University of New York Press, bouthoorn Lodovico Lazzarelli, The Hermetic Writings and Related Documents, Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Tempe,2005

25.
Superstition
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The word superstition is generally used to refer to the religion not practiced by the majority of a given society regardless of whether the prevailing religion contains superstitions. In the classical era, the existence of gods was actively debated both among philosophers and theologians, and opposition to superstition arose consequently, the poem De rerum natura, written by the Roman poet and philosopher Lucretius further developed the opposition to superstition. Cicero’s work De natura deorum also had a influence on the development of the modern concept of superstition as well as the word itself. Where Cicero distinguished superstitio and religio, Lucretius used only the term religio, Cicero, for whom superstitio meant “excessive fear of the gods” wrote that “superstitio, non religio, tollenda est ”, which means that only superstition, and not religion, should be abolished. The Roman Empire also made laws condemning those who excited excessive religious fear in others, during the Middle Ages, the idea of God’s influence on the world’s events went mostly undisputed. Trials by ordeal were quite frequent, even though Frederick II was the first king who explicitly outlawed trials by ordeal as they were considered “irrational”, the rediscovery of lost classical works and scientific advancement led to a steadily increasing disbelief in religions. This led to studies of biblical exegesis, pioneered by Spinoza, opposition to superstition was central to the Age of Enlightenment. The word superstition is first used in English in the 15th century, the earliest known use as an English noun occurs in Friar Daws Reply, where the foure general synnes are enumerated as Cediciouns, supersticions, þe glotouns, & þe proude. The French word, together with its Romance cognates continues Latin superstitio, while the formation of the Latin word is clear, from the verb super-stare, to stand over, stand upon, survive, its original intended sense is less clear. The earliest known use as a Latin noun occurs in Plautus, Ennius and later by Pliny, Cicero derived the term from superstitiosi, lit. Those who are left over, i. e. survivors, descendants, while Cicero distinguishes between religio and superstitio, Lucretius uses only the term religio. Throughout all of his work, he distinguished between ratio and religio. The use of the noun by Cicero and Horace thus predates the first attestation of the verb and it doesnt exclude that the verb might have been created and used after the name. The term superstitio, or superstitio vana vain superstition, was applied in the 1st century to those religious cults in the Roman Empire which were officially outlawed. This concerned the religion of the druids in particular, which was described as a superstitio vana by Tacitus, such fear of the gods was what the Romans meant by superstition. Diderots Encyclopédie defines superstition as any excess of religion in general, the Catechism is a defense against the accusation that Catholic doctrine is superstitious, Superstition is a deviation of religious feeling and of the practices this feeling imposes. It can even affect the worship we offer the true God, to attribute the efficacy of prayers or of sacramental signs to their mere external performance, apart from the interior dispositions that they demand is to fall into superstition. Cf. Matthew 23, 16–22 As discussed above, there is distinction between superstition and religion

26.
New religious movements
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NRMs can be novel in origin or part of a wider religion, in which case they are distinct from pre-existing denominations. Some NRMs deal with the challenges posed by the world by embracing individualism whereas others seek tightly knit collective means. Scholars have estimated that NRMs now number in the tens of thousands worldwide, with most of their members living in Asia, most have only a few members, some have thousands, and only very few have more than one million members. New religions have often faced a hostile reception from established religious organisations, in Western nations, a secular anti-cult movement and a Christian countercult movement emerged during the 1970s and 1980s to oppose emergent groups. In the 1970s, the field of new religions studies developed within the academic study of religion. There are now several organisations and peer-reviewed journals devoted to the subject. Scholars continue to try to reach definitions and define boundaries, there is no singular, agreed upon criteria for defining a new religious movement. However, the term usually requires that the group be both of recent origin and different from existing religions, there is debate as to what the term new should designate in this context. According to him, NRMs constituted those religious groups that have found, from the perspective of the dominant religious community, to be not just different. This definition would mean that which religions were regarded as NRMs would differ from country to country and would be open to change, as noted by scholars of religion Olav Hammer and Mikael Rothstein, new religions are just young religions. Melton has stated that those NRMs which were offshoots of older religious groups, tended to resemble their parent group far more than each other. One question that faces scholars of religion is when a new religious movement ceases to be new, some NRMs are strongly counter-cultural and alternative in the society they appear in, while others are far more similar to a societys established traditional religions. There are also problems in the use of religion within the new religious movements. Since at least the early 2000s, most sociologists of religion have used the new religious movement to avoid the pejorative undertones of terms like cult. These are words that have used in different ways by different groups. For instance, from the nineteenth century onward a number of sociologists used the terms cult, the term cult is used in reference to devotion or dedication to a particular person or place. For instance, within the Roman Catholic Church devotion to Mary and it is also used in non-religious contexts to refer to fandoms devoted to television shows like The Prisoner, The X-Files, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. In the United States, the term began to be used in a pejorative manner to refer to Spiritualism

27.
Nature religion
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A nature religion is a religious movement that believes the natural world is an embodiment of divinity, sacredness or spiritual power. Nature religions include indigenous religions practiced in parts of the world by cultures who consider the environment to be imbued with spirits. It also includes contemporary Pagan faiths such as Wicca, Neo-Druidism and the Goddess movement, following on from Albaneses development of the term it has since been used by other academics working in the discipline. Peter Beyer noted the existence of a series of characteristics which he believed were shared by different nature religions. Furthermore, Beyer noted, nature religionists often held a concomitant distrust of, instead of this, he felt that among nature religious communities, there was a valuing of community as non-hierarchical and a conditional optimism with regard to human capacity and the future. In the sphere of the environment, Beyer noted that nature religionists held to a conception of reality. Similarly, Beyer noted the individualism which was favoured by nature religionists, along similar lines, he also commented on the strong experiential basis to nature religionist beliefs where personal experience is a final arbiter of truth or validity

28.
Freyr
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Freyr or Frey is one of the most important gods of Norse religion. The name is conjectured to derive from the Proto-Norse *frawjaz, lord, Freyr was associated with sacral kingship, virility and prosperity, with sunshine and fair weather, and was pictured as a phallic fertility god, Freyr is said to bestow peace and pleasure on mortals. Freyr, sometimes referred to as Yngvi-Freyr, was associated with Sweden and seen as an ancestor of the Swedish royal house. In the Icelandic books the Poetic Edda and the Prose Edda, Freyr is presented as one of the Vanir, the gods gave him Álfheimr, the realm of the Elves, as a teething present. He rides the shining dwarf-made boar Gullinbursti and possesses the ship Skíðblaðnir which always has a favorable breeze and can be folded together and he has the servants Skírnir, Byggvir and Beyla. The most extensive surviving Freyr myth relates Freyrs falling in love with the female jötunn Gerðr, eventually, she becomes his wife but first Freyr has to give away his magic sword which fights on its own if wise be he who wields it. Although deprived of this weapon, Freyr defeats the jötunn Beli with an antler, however, lacking his sword, Freyr will be killed by the fire jötunn Surtr during the events of Ragnarök. Like other Germanic deities, veneration of Freyr is revived in the period in Heathenry. Written around 1080, one of the oldest written sources on pre-Christian Scandinavian religious practices is Adam of Bremens Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum, Adam claimed to have access to first-hand accounts on pagan practices in Sweden. He refers to Freyr with the Latinized name Fricco and mentions that an image of him at Skara was destroyed by the Christian missionary and his description of the Temple at Uppsala gives some details on the god. Later in the account Adam states that when a marriage is performed a libation is made to the image of Fricco, historians are divided on the reliability of Adams account. While he is close in time to the events he describes he has an agenda to emphasize the role of the Archbishopric of Hamburg-Bremen in the Christianization of Scandinavia. His timeframe for the Christianization of Sweden conflicts with other sources, such as runic inscriptions, on the other hand, the existence of phallic idols was confirmed in 1904 with a find at Rällinge in Södermanland. When Snorri Sturluson was writing in 13th century Iceland, the indigenous Germanic gods were still remembered although they had not been openly worshiped for more than two centuries, in the Gylfaginning section of his Prose Edda, Snorri introduces Freyr as one of the major gods. This description has similarities to the account by Adam of Bremen. Adam assigns control of the weather and produce of the fields to Thor, Snorri also omits any explicitly sexual references in Freyrs description. Those discrepancies can be explained in several ways and it is possible that the Norse gods did not have exactly the same roles in Icelandic and Swedish paganism but it must also be remembered that Adam and Snorri were writing with different goals in mind. Either Snorri or Adam may also have had distorted information, the only extended myth related about Freyr in the Prose Edda is the story of his marriage

29.
European Congress of Ethnic Religions
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The first World Pagan Congress was hosted in June 1998 in Vilnius, Lithuania, organized by Jonas Trinkunas, the founder of Romuva, a Lithuanian neopagan organization. The renaming from Pagan to Ethnic was the result of a passionate debate. The congress was held under the name World Congress of Ethnic Religions during 1999 to 2010, the 2006 and 2009 conferences were held in India, in the spirit of collaboration between western Neopaganism and Hinduism. The intention of a scope was more of a dream than reality. To reflect this, the organization was renamed European Congress of Ethnic Religions on 2010, member organizations represent Baltic, Slavic, Germanic, Greek and Roman traditions

30.
Ethnic group
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An ethnic group or ethnicity is a category of people who identify with each other based on similarities, such as common ancestral, language, social, cultural or national experiences. Unlike other social groups, ethnicity is often an inherited status based on the society in which one lives, in some cases, it can be adopted if a person moves into another society. Ethnic groups, derived from the historical founder population, often continue to speak related languages. By way of language shift, acculturation, adoption and religious conversion, it is possible for individuals or groups to leave one ethnic group. Ethnicity is often used synonymously with terms such as nation or people. In English, it can also have the connotation of something exotic, generally related to cultures of more recent immigrants, the largest ethnic groups in modern times comprise hundreds of millions of individuals, while the smallest are limited to a few dozen individuals. Conversely, formerly separate ethnicities can merge to form a pan-ethnicity, whether through division or amalgamation, the formation of a separate ethnic identity is referred to as ethnogenesis. The term ethnic is derived from the Greek word ἔθνος ethnos, the inherited English language term for this concept is folk, used alongside the latinate people since the late Middle English period. In Early Modern English and until the mid-19th century, ethnic was used to mean heathen or pagan, as the Septuagint used ta ethne to translate the Hebrew goyim the nations, non-Hebrews, non-Jews. The Greek term in antiquity could refer to any large group, a host of men. In the 19th century, the term came to be used in the sense of peculiar to a race, people or nation, the abstract ethnicity had been used for paganism in the 18th century, but now came to express the meaning of an ethnic character. The term ethnic group was first recorded in 1935 and entered the Oxford English Dictionary in 1972, depending on the context that is used, the term nationality may either be used synonymously with ethnicity, or synonymously with citizenship. The process that results in the emergence of an ethnicity is called ethnogenesis, the Greeks at this time did not describe foreign nations but had also developed a concept of their own ethnicity, which they grouped under the name of Hellenes. Herodotus gave an account of what defined Greek ethnic identity in his day, enumerating shared descent. Whether ethnicity qualifies as a universal is to some extent dependent on the exact definition used. Many social scientists, such as anthropologists Fredrik Barth and Eric Wolf and they regard ethnicity as a product of specific kinds of inter-group interactions, rather than an essential quality inherent to human groups. According to Thomas Hylland Eriksen, the study of ethnicity was dominated by two distinct debates until recently, one is between primordialism and instrumentalism. In the primordialist view, the participant perceives ethnic ties collectively, as a given, even coercive

31.
Ethnology
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Ethnology is the branch of anthropology that compares and analyzes the characteristics of different peoples and the relationship between them. The term ethnologia is credited to Adam Franz Kollár who used and defined it in his Historiae ivrisqve pvblici Regni Vngariae amoenitates published in Vienna in 1783, the distinction between the three terms is increasingly blurry. Ethnology has been considered a field since the late 18th century especially in Europe and is sometimes conceived of as any comparative study of human groups. The 15th-century exploration of America by European explorers had an important role in formulating new notions of the Occidental, such as and this term was used in conjunction with savages, which was either seen as a brutal barbarian, or alternatively, as noble savage. Thus, civilization was opposed in a dualist manner to barbary, lévi-Strauss often referred to Montaignes essay on cannibalism as an early example of ethnology. Lévi-Strauss aimed, through a method, at discovering universal invariants in human society. However, the claims of such cultural universalism have been criticized by various 19th and 20th century social thinkers, including Marx, Nietzsche, Foucault, Derrida, Althusser, list of scholars of ethnology Forster, Johann Georg Adam. Voyage round the World in His Britannic Majesty’s Sloop, Resolution, Commanded by Capt. James Cook, during the Years 1772,3,4, the Elementary Structures of Kinship, Structural Anthropology Mauss, Marcel. Originally published as Essai sur le don, forme et raison de léchange dans les sociétés archaïques in 1925, this classic text on gift economy appears in the English edition as The Gift, The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies. Akwe-Shavante society, The Politics of Ethnicity, Indigenous Peoples in Latin American States, problemi generali delletnologia europea, La Ricerca Folklorica, No. Webpage History of German Anthropology/Ethnology 1945/49-1990 Languages describes the languages and ethnic groups found worldwide, national Museum of Ethnology - Osaka, Japan Texts on Wikisource, Rhyn, G. A. F. Van

32.
Slavic languages
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The Slavic languages are the Indo-European languages native to the Slavic peoples, originally from Eastern Europe. The Slavic languages are divided intro three subgroups, East, West, and South, which constitute more than twenty languages. Furthermore, the diasporas of many Slavic peoples have established isolated minorities of speakers of their languages all over the world, the number of speakers of all Slavic languages together is estimated to be 315 million. The Old Novgorod dialect may have reflected some idiosyncrasies of this group, mutual intelligibility also plays a role in determining the West, East, and South branches. Speakers of languages within the branch will in most cases be able to understand each other at least partially. The tripartite division of the Slavic languages does not take account the spoken dialects of each language. For example, Slovak and Ukrainian are bridged by the Rusyn of Eastern Slovakia, similarly, Polish shares transitional features with both western Ukrainian and Belarusian dialects. The Croatian Kajkavian dialect is similar to Slovene than to the standard Croatian language. Within the individual Slavic languages, dialects may vary to a degree, as those of Russian, or to a much greater degree. The secession of the Balto-Slavic dialect ancestral to Proto-Slavic is estimated on archaeological and glottochronological criteria to have occurred sometime in the period 1500–1000 BCE, the imposition of Church Slavonic on Orthodox Slavs was often at the expense of the vernacular. The use of such media hampered the development of the languages for literary purposes. Lockwood also notes that these languages have enriched themselves by drawing on Church Slavonic for the vocabulary of abstract concepts, the situation in the Catholic countries, where Latin was more important, was different. The Polish Renaissance poet Jan Kochanowski and the Croatian Baroque writers of the 16th century all wrote in their respective vernaculars, although Church Slavonic hampered vernacular literatures, it fostered Slavonic literary activity and abetted linguistic independence from external influences. Only the Croatian vernacular literary tradition nearly matches Church Slavonic in age, the most important early monument of Croatian literacy is the Baška tablet from the late 11th century. It is a stone tablet found in the small Church of St. Lucy, Jurandvor on the Croatian island of Krk. The independence of Dubrovnik facilitated the continuity of the tradition, more recent foreign influences follow the same general pattern in Slavic languages as elsewhere and are governed by the political relationships of the Slavs. In the 17th century, bourgeois Russian absorbed German words through direct contacts between Russians and communities of German settlers in Russia, in the 19th century, Russian influenced most literary Slavic languages by one means or another. The Proto-Slavic language existed until around AD500, by the 7th century, it had broken apart into large dialectal zones

33.
Indigenous religions
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Ethnic religion, alongside indigenous religion, is a term used within religious studies to describe various expressions of religion associated with a particular ethnic group. Ethnic religions are often distinguished from religions which claim to not be limited in ethnic or national scope, ethnic religions do not have to be excluded to independent religions. A number of terms have been used instead of ethnic or indigenous religions. The term primal religion was coined by Andrew Walls in the University of Aberdeen in the 1970s to provide a focus on forms of religion as found in Africa, Asia. Cox prefers to use the indigenous religion. Another term that is used is folk religion. While ethnic religion and folk religion have overlapping uses, the term implies the appropriation of religious beliefs. Ethnic religions are distinctive in their relationship with an ethnic group. Some ethnic religions can be strong, for instance Hinduism of the Indians, Judaism of the Jews, Shenism of the Han Chinese. Some ancient ethnic religions, such as those found in pre-modern Europe, have found new vitality in neopaganism. Moreover, non-ethnic religions such as Christianity have been known to assume ethnic traits to an extent that they serve a role as an important ethnic identity marker, animism Ancestor worship Endogamy List of ethnic religions List of Neopagan movements National god Shamanism Totemism

34.
World religion
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The worlds principal religions and spiritual traditions may be classified into a small number of major groups, although this is by no means a uniform practice. This theory began in the 18th century with the goal of recognizing the relative levels of civility in societies, in world cultures, there have traditionally been many different groupings of religious belief. In Indian culture, different religious philosophies were traditionally respected as academic differences in pursuit of the same truth, in Islam, the Quran mentions three different categories, Muslims, the People of the Book, and idol worshipers. Initially, Christians had a dichotomy of world beliefs, Christian civility versus foreign heresy or barbarity. Daniel Defoe described the definition as follows, Religion is properly the Worship given to God. Therefore, Hannah Adamss early encyclopedia, for example, had its name changed from An Alphabetical Compendium of the Various Sects. to A Dictionary of All Religions and Religious Denominations. The modern meaning of the world religion, putting non-Christians at the same level as Christians. T. Suzuki, and Alan Watts, who influenced the public conception of world religions. Even history professors have now taken note of these complications and advise against teaching world religions in schools, others see the shaping of religions in the context of the nation-state as the invention of traditions. Religious traditions fall into super-groups in comparative religion, arranged by historical origin, Abrahamic religions originate in West Asia, Indian religions in the Indian subcontinent and East Asian religions in East Asia. Another group with supra-regional influence are Afro-American religion, which have their origins in Central, middle Eastern religions, Abrahamic religions are the largest group, and these consist mainly of Christianity, Islam, Judaism and the Baháí Faith. They are named for the patriarch Abraham, and are unified by the practice of monotheism, today, around 3.4 billion people are followers of Abrahamic religions and are spread widely around the world apart from the regions around East and Southeast Asia. Several Abrahamic organizations are vigorous proselytizers, iranian religions, partly of Indo-European origins, include Zoroastrianism, Yazdânism, Ætsæg Din, Ahl-e Haqq and historical traditions of Gnosticism. It has significant overlaps with Abrahamic traditions, e. g. in Sufism and in recent movements such as Bábism and the Baháí Faith. Indian religions, originated in Greater India and partly of Indo-European origins, they tend to share a number of key concepts, such as dharma, karma, reincarnation among others. They are of the most influence across the Indian subcontinent, East Asia, Southeast Asia, the main Indian religions are Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism and Sikhism. East Asian religions consist of several East Asian religions which use of the concept of Tao or Dō. They include many Chinese folk religions, Taoism and Confucianism, as well as Korean, indigenous ethnic religions, found on every continent, now marginalized by the major organized faiths in many parts of the world or persisting as undercurrents of major religions

35.
Hinduism
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Hinduism is a religion, or a way of life, found most notably in India and Nepal. Hinduism has been called the oldest religion in the world, and some practitioners and scholars refer to it as Sanātana Dharma, scholars regard Hinduism as a fusion or synthesis of various Indian cultures and traditions, with diverse roots and no founder. This Hindu synthesis started to develop between 500 BCE and 300 CE following the Vedic period, although Hinduism contains a broad range of philosophies, it is linked by shared concepts, recognisable rituals, cosmology, shared textual resources, and pilgrimage to sacred sites. Hindu texts are classified into Shruti and Smriti and these texts discuss theology, philosophy, mythology, Vedic yajna, Yoga, agamic rituals, and temple building, among other topics. Major scriptures include the Vedas and Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, prominent themes in Hindu beliefs include the four Puruṣārthas, the proper goals or aims of human life, namely Dharma, Artha, Kama and Moksha, karma, samsara, and the various Yogas. Hindu practices include such as puja and recitations, meditation, family-oriented rites of passage, annual festivals. Some Hindus leave their world and material possessions, then engage in lifelong Sannyasa to achieve Moksha. Hinduism prescribes the eternal duties, such as honesty, refraining from injuring living beings, patience, forbearance, self-restraint, Hinduism is the worlds third largest religion, with over one billion followers or 15% of the global population, known as Hindus. The majority of Hindus reside in India, Nepal, Mauritius, the Caribbean, the word Hindu is derived from the Indo-Aryan/Sanskrit word Sindhu, the Indo-Aryan name for the Indus River in the northwestern part of the Indian subcontinent. The term Hindu in these ancient records is a geographical term, the Arabic term al-Hind referred to the people who live across the River Indus. This Arabic term was taken from the pre-Islamic Persian term Hindū. By the 13th century, Hindustan emerged as an alternative name of India. It was only towards the end of the 18th century that European merchants and colonists began to refer to the followers of Indian religions collectively as Hindus. The term Hinduism, then spelled Hindooism, was introduced into the English language in the 18th-century to denote the religious, philosophical, because of the wide range of traditions and ideas covered by the term Hinduism, arriving at a comprehensive definition is difficult. The religion defies our desire to define and categorize it, Hinduism has been variously defined as a religion, a religious tradition, a set of religious beliefs, and a way of life. From a Western lexical standpoint, Hinduism like other faiths is appropriately referred to as a religion, in India the term dharma is preferred, which is broader than the western term religion. Hindu traditionalists prefer to call it Sanatana Dharma, the study of India and its cultures and religions, and the definition of Hinduism, has been shaped by the interests of colonialism and by Western notions of religion. Since the 1990s, those influences and its outcomes have been the topic of debate among scholars of Hinduism, Hinduism as it is commonly known can be subdivided into a number of major currents

36.
Shinto
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Shinto practices were first recorded and codified in the written historical records of the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki in the 8th century. Still, these earliest Japanese writings do not refer to a unified Shinto religion, practitioners express their diverse beliefs through a standard language and practice, adopting a similar style in dress and ritual, dating from around the time of the Nara and Heian periods. The word Shinto was adopted, originally as Jindō or Shindō, from the written Chinese Shendao, the oldest recorded usage of the word Shindo is from the second half of the 6th century. Kami are defined in English as spirits, essences or gods, Kami and people are not separate, they exist within the same world and share its interrelated complexity. Shinto is the largest religion in Japan, practiced by nearly 80% of the population, Shinto has 81,000 shrines and 85,000 priests in the country. According to Inoue, In modern scholarship, the term is used with reference to kami worship and related theologies, rituals. In these contexts, Shinto takes on the meaning of Japans traditional religion, as opposed to religions such as Christianity, Buddhism, Islam. Shinto religious expressions have been distinguished by scholars into a series of categories, Shrine Shinto and it consists in taking part in worship practices and events at local shrines. Before the Meiji Restoration, shrines were disorganized institutions usually attached to Buddhist temples, the current successor to the imperial organization system, the Association of Shinto Shrines, oversees about 80,000 shrines nationwide. Folk Shinto includes the folk beliefs in deities and spirits. Practices include divination, spirit possession, and shamanic healing, some of their practices come from Buddhism, Taoism or Confucianism, but most come from ancient local traditions. Sect Shinto is a designation originally created in the 1890s to separate government-owned shrines from local organised religious communities. These communities originated especially in the Edo period, the basic difference between Shrine Shinto and Sect Shinto is that sects are a later development and grew self-consciously. They can identify a founder, a set of teachings. Sect Shinto groups are thirteen, and usually classified under five headings, pure Shinto sects, Confucian sects, mountain worship sects, purification sects, and faith-healing sects. Koshintō, literally Old Shinto, is a reconstructed Shinto from before the time of Buddhism, today based on Ainu religion and it continues the restoration movement begun by Hirata Atsutane. Many other sects and schools can be distinguished, Kami or shin is defined in English as god, spirit, spiritual essence, all these terms meaning the energy generating a thing. Since the Japanese language does not distinguish between singular and plural, kami refers to the divinity, or sacred essence, that manifests in multiple forms, rocks, trees, rivers, animals, places, and even people can be said to possess the nature of kami

37.
Sub-Saharan Africa
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Sub-Saharan Africa is, geographically, the area of the continent of Africa that lies south of the Sahara. According to the UN, it consists of all African countries that are fully or partially located south of the Sahara and it contrasts with North Africa, whose territories are part of the League of Arab states within the Arab world. Somalia, Djibouti, Comoros and Mauritania are geographically in Sub-Saharan Africa, the Sahel is the transitional zone between the Sahara and the tropical savanna and forest-savanna mosaic to the south. The Sahara pump theory explains how flora and fauna left Africa to penetrate the Middle East, African pluvial periods are associated with a wet Sahara phase during which larger lakes and more rivers existed. Geographers historically divided the region into several distinct ethnographic sections based on each areas respective inhabitants, commentators in Arabic in the medieval period used the general term bilâd as-sûdân for the vast Sudan region, or sometimes extending from the coast of West Africa to Western Sudan. Its equivalent in Southeast Africa was Zanj, which was situated in the vicinity of the Great Lakes region. The geographers drew an explicit distinction between the Sudan region and its analogue Zanj, from the area to their extreme east on the Red Sea coast in the Horn of Africa. In modern-day Ethiopia and Eritrea was Al-Habash or Abyssinia, which was inhabited by the Habash or Abyssinians, Sub-Saharan Africa has a wide variety of climate zones or biomes. South Africa and the Democratic Republic of the Congo in particular are considered Megadiverse countries, the Sahel shoots across all of Africa at a latitude of about 10° to 15° N. Countries that include parts of the Sahara Desert proper in their territories and parts of the Sahel in their southern region include Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Chad. The Sahel has a hot semi-arid climate, South of the Sahel, there is a belt of savanna, widening to include most of South Sudan and Ethiopia in the east. The Serengeti ecosystem is located in northwestern Tanzania and extends to southwestern Kenya, the Kalahari Basin includes the Kalahari Desert surrounded by a belt of semi-desert. The Bushveld is a tropical ecoregion of Southern Africa. The Karoo is a semi-desert in western South Africa and this occurred 10 million to 5 million years ago. By 3 million years ago several australopithecine hominid species had developed throughout southern, eastern and they were tool users rather than tool manufacturers. The tools were classed as Oldowan, roughly 1.8 million years ago, Homo ergaster first appeared in the fossil record in Africa. From Homo ergaster, Homo erectus evolved 1.5 million years ago, some of the earlier representatives of this species were small-brained and used primitive stone tools, much like H. habilis. The brain later grew in size, and H. erectus eventually developed a complex stone tool technology called the Acheulean

38.
Indigenous peoples
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Groups are usually described as indigenous when they maintain traditions or other aspects of an early culture that is associated with a given region. Not all indigenous peoples share such characteristics, Indigenous societies are found in every inhabited climate zone and continent of the world. Estimates put the population of indigenous peoples from 220 million to 350 million. The adjective indigenous is derived from the Latin word indigena, which is based on the root gen- to be born with a form of the prefix in in. Any given people, ethnic group or community may be described as indigenous in reference to some particular region or location that they see as their tribal land claim. Other terms used to refer to indigenous populations are aboriginal, native, original, james Anaya, former Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, has defined indigenous peoples as living descendants of pre-invasion inhabitants of lands now dominated by others. They are culturally distinct groups that find themselves engulfed by other settler societies born of forces of empire, throughout history, different states designate the groups within their boundaries that are recognized as indigenous peoples according to international or national legislation by different terms. Their ability to influence and participate in the policies that may exercise jurisdiction over their traditional lands. The presence of external laws, claims and cultural mores either potentially or actually act to constrain the practices and observances of an indigenous society. These constraints can be observed even when the society is regulated largely by its own tradition. They may be imposed, or arise as unintended consequence of trans-cultural interaction. They may have an effect, even where countered by other external influences. This definition has some limitations, because the definition applies mainly to pre-colonial populations, the primary impetus in considering indigenous identity comes from the post-colonial movements and considering the historical impacts on populations by the European imperialism. Greek sources of the Classical period acknowledge the existence of indigenous people. These peoples inhabited lands surrounding the Aegean Sea before the subsequent migrations of the Hellenic ancestors claimed by these authors, the disposition and precise identity of this former group is elusive, and sources such as Homer, Hesiod and Herodotus give varying, partially mythological accounts. However, it is clear that cultures existed whose indigenous characteristics were distinguished by the subsequent Hellenic cultures, greco-Roman society flourished between 250 BC and 480 AD and commanded successive waves of conquests that gripped more than half of the globe. The rapid and extensive spread of the various European powers from the early 15th century onwards had an impact upon many of the indigenous cultures with whom they came into contact. The Canary Islands had an indigenous population called the Guanches whose origin is still the subject of discussion among historians, the United Nations estimates that there are over 370 million indigenous people living in over 70 countries worldwide

39.
Colonialism
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Colonialism is the establishment of a colony in one territory by a political power from another territory, and the subsequent maintenance, expansion, and exploitation of that colony. The term is used to describe a set of unequal relationships between the colonial power and the colony and often between the colonists and the indigenous peoples. The European colonial period was the era from the 16th century to the century when several European powers established colonies in Asia, Africa. At first the countries followed a policy of mercantilism, designed to strengthen the economy at the expense of rivals. By the mid-19th century, however, the powerful British Empire gave up mercantilism and trade restrictions and introduced the principle of free trade, collins English Dictionary defines colonialism as the policy and practice of a power in extending control over weaker peoples or areas. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary offers four definitions, including something characteristic of a colony, in the book, Osterhammel asks, How can colonialism be defined independently from colony. He settles on a definition, Colonialism is a relationship between an indigenous majority and a minority of foreign invaders. The fundamental decisions affecting the lives of the people are made. Rejecting cultural compromises with the population, the colonizers are convinced of their own superiority. Historians often distinguish between two overlapping forms of colonialism, Settler colonialism involves large-scale immigration, often motivated by religious, political, exploitation colonialism involves fewer colonists and focuses on access to resources for export, typically to the metropole. Surrogate colonialism involves a settlement project supported by a colonial power, internal colonialism is a notion of uneven structural power between areas of a state. The source of exploitation comes from within the state, as colonialism often played out in pre-populated areas, sociocultural evolution included the formation of various ethnically hybrid populations. In fact, everywhere where colonial powers established a consistent and continued presence, notable examples in Asia include the Anglo-Burmese, Anglo-Indian, Burgher, Eurasian Singaporean, Filipino mestizo, Kristang and Macanese peoples. In the Dutch East Indies the vast majority of Dutch settlers were in fact Eurasians known as Indo-Europeans, the Other, or othering is the process of creating a separate entity to persons or groups who are labelled as different or non-normal due to the repetition of characteristics. Othering is the creation from those who discriminate, to distinguish, label, several scholars in recent decades developed the notion of the other as an epistemological concept in social theory. For example, postcolonial scholars, believed that colonizing powers explained an ‘other’ who were there to dominate, civilize, political geographers explain how colonial/ imperial powers othered places they wanted to dominate to legalize their exploitation of the land. During the rise of colonialism and after, post colonialism, the Western powers perspectives of the East as the other, different and this viewpoint and separation of culture had divided the Eastern and Western culture creating a dominant/ subordinate dynamic, both being the other towards themselves. The word metropole comes from the Greek metropolis —mother city, the word colony comes from the Latin colonia—a place for agriculture

40.
Animal sacrifice
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Animal sacrifice is the ritual killing and offering of an animal to appease or maintain favour with a deity. Such forms of sacrifice are practised within many religions around the world, all or only part of a sacrificial animal may be offered, especially in the context of ritual slaughter. Animal sacrifices were common throughout Europe and the Ancient Near East until Late Antiquity, the Minoan settlement of Phaistos in ancient Crete reveals basins for animal sacrifice dating to the period 2000 to 1700 BC. The most common usages are animal sacrifice, zevah shelamim and olah, a qorban was an animal sacrifice, such as a bull, sheep, goat, deer or a dove that underwent shechita. Sacrifices could also consist grain, meal, wine, or incense, the Hebrew Bible says that Yahweh commanded the Israelites to offer offerings and sacrifices on various altars. The sacrifices were only to be offered by the hands of the Kohanim, before building the Temple in Jerusalem, when the Israelites were in the desert, sacrifices were offered only in the Tabernacle. After building Solomons Temple, sacrifices were allowed only there, after the Temple was destroyed, sacrifices was resumed when the Second Temple was built until it was also destroyed in 70 CE. After the destruction of the Second Temple sacrifices were prohibited because there was no longer a Temple, offering of sacrifices was briefly reinstated during the Jewish–Roman wars of the second century CE and was continued in certain communities thereafter. The Samaritans, a group related to the Jews, practice animal sacrifice in accordance with the Law of Moses. References to animal sacrifice appear in the New Testament, such as the parents of Jesus sacrificing two doves and the Apostle Paul performing a Nazirite vow even after the death of Christ. Christ is referred to by his apostles as the Lamb of God, some villages in Greece sacrifice animals to Orthodox saints in a practice known as kourbania. Sacrifice of a lamb, or less commonly a rooster, is a practice in Armenian Church. This tradition, called matagh, is believed to stem from pre-Christian pagan rituals, Animal sacrifice was instituted in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a minor Latter Day Saint faction founded by James J. Strang in 1844. Strangs Book of the Law of the Lord deals with the topic of animal sacrifice in chapters 7 and 40, given the prohibition on sacrifices for sin contained in III Nephi 9, 19-20, Strang did not require sin offerings. Rather, he focused on sacrifice as an element of religious celebrations, especially the commemoration of his own coronation as king over his church, which occurred on July 8,1850. The head of house, from the king to his lowest subject, was to offer a heifer, or a lamb. Every man a clean beast, or a clean fowl, according to his household, while the killing of sacrifices was a prerogative of Strangite priests, female priests were specifically barred from participating in this aspect of the priestly office. Firstfruits offerings were also demanded of all Strangite agricultural harvests, Animal sacrifices are no longer practiced by the Strangite organization, though belief in their correctness is still required

41.
Ronald Hutton
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Ronald Hutton is an English historian who specialises in the study of Early Modern Britain, British folklore, pre-Christian religion and contemporary Paganism. A professor in the subject at the University of Bristol, Hutton has published fourteen books and has appeared on British television and he has held a fellowship at Magdalen College, Oxford and is a Commissioner of English Heritage. Born in Ootacamund, India into a middle-class English family, Hutton subsequently returned to England, attended a school in Ilford and he took part in a number of excavations until 1976 and toured the countrys chambered tombs. Ultimately he decided to study history at Pembroke College, Cambridge and then Magdalen College, focusing his efforts on Early Modern Britain, he published a trio of books on the subject during that decade, The Royalist War Effort, The Restoration and Charles the Second. Hutton was born on 19 December 1953 in Ootacamund, India to a colonial family, meanwhile, during the period between 1966 and 1969, he visited every prehistoric chambered tomb surviving in England and Wales, and wrote a guide to them, for myself and friends. Despite his love of archaeology, he decided to study history at university. From Cambridge, he went on to study at Oxford University, in 1981, Hutton moved to the University of Bristol where he took up the position of reader of History. In that year he published his first book, The Royalist War Effort 1642–1646. The term pagan is used as a convenient shorthand for those beliefs and practices, in keeping with what was by then the prevailing academic view, it disputed the widely held idea that ancient paganism had survived into the contemporary and had been revived by the Pagan movement. Ultimately, Hutton would later relate, she recognised that she had misunderstood me and she went on to attack Huttons writing style, calling the book dry as dust and claimed that she was sorry I bothered to plough through it. If this is rigor, it is mortis, in these works he criticised commonly held attitudes, such as the idea of Merry England and the idea that folk customs were static and unchanging over the centuries. Once again, he was following prevailing expert opinion in doing so, in 1999, his first work fully focusing on Paganism was published by Oxford University Press, The Triumph of the Moon, A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft. Hutton questioned many assumptions about Wiccas development and argued many of the claimed connections to longstanding hidden pagan traditions are questionable at best. However, he argued for its importance as a genuine new religious movement. The response from the Neopagan community was somewhat mixed, many Pagans embraced his work, with the prominent Wiccan Elder Frederic Lamond referring to it as an authority on the history of Gardnerian Wicca. Public criticism came from the practicing Wiccan Jani Farrell-Roberts, who took part in a debate with Hutton in The Cauldron magazine in 2003. Farrell-Roberts was of the opinion that in his works, Hutton dismissed Margaret Murrays theories about the Witch-Cult using Norman Cohns theories, after studying the history of Wicca, Hutton went on to look at the history of Druidry, both the historical and the contemporary. His first book on the subject, The Druids, was published in 2007, part of this material was given as the first lecture of the Mount Haemus Award series

42.
Parthenon
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The Parthenon is a former temple, on the Athenian Acropolis, Greece, dedicated to the goddess Athena, whom the people of Athens considered their patron. Construction began in 447 BC when the Athenian Empire was at the peak of its power and it was completed in 438 BC although decoration of the building continued until 432 BC. It is the most important surviving building of Classical Greece, generally considered the zenith of the Doric order and its decorative sculptures are considered some of the high points of Greek art. The Parthenon is regarded as an symbol of Ancient Greece, Athenian democracy and western civilization. The Greek Ministry of Culture is currently carrying out a programme of restoration and reconstruction to ensure the stability of the partially ruined structure. The Parthenon itself replaced a temple of Athena, which historians call the Pre-Parthenon or Older Parthenon. The temple is aligned to the Hyades. While a sacred building dedicated to the patron goddess, the Parthenon was actually used primarily as a treasury. For a time, it served as the treasury of the Delian League, in the final decade of the sixth century AD, the Parthenon was converted into a Christian church dedicated to the Virgin Mary. After the Ottoman conquest, it was turned into a mosque in the early 1460s, on 26 September 1687, an Ottoman ammunition dump inside the building was ignited by Venetian bombardment. The resulting explosion damaged the Parthenon and its sculptures. From 1800 to 1803, Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin removed some of the sculptures with the alleged permission of the Ottoman Empire. These sculptures, now known as the Elgin Marbles or the Parthenon Marbles, were sold in 1816 to the British Museum in London, since 1983, the Greek government has been committed to the return of the sculptures to Greece. The Liddell–Scott–Jones Greek–English Lexicon states that this room was the western cella of the Parthenon, jamauri D. Christopher Pelling asserts that Athena Parthenos may have constituted a discrete cult of Athena, intimately connected with, but not identical to, that of Athena Polias. According to this theory, the name of the Parthenon means the temple of the virgin goddess and it has also been suggested that the name of the temple alludes to the maidens, whose supreme sacrifice guaranteed the safety of the city. Parthénos has also applied to the Virgin Mary, Parthénos Maria. The first instance in which Parthenon definitely refers to the building is found in the writings of the 4th century BC orator Demosthenes. In 5th-century building accounts, the structure is simply called ho naos, because the Parthenon was dedicated to the Greek goddess Athena, it has sometimes been referred to as the Temple of Minerva, the Roman name for Athena, particularly during the 19th century

43.
Athens
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Athens is the capital and largest city of Greece. In modern times, Athens is a cosmopolitan metropolis and central to economic, financial, industrial, maritime. In 2015, Athens was ranked the worlds 29th richest city by purchasing power, Athens is recognised as a global city because of its location and its importance in shipping, finance, commerce, media, entertainment, arts, international trade, culture, education and tourism. It is one of the biggest economic centres in southeastern Europe, with a financial sector. The municipality of Athens had a population of 664,046 within its limits. The urban area of Athens extends beyond its administrative city limits. According to Eurostat in 2011, the Functional urban areas of Athens was the 9th most populous FUA in the European Union, Athens is also the southernmost capital on the European mainland. The city also retains Roman and Byzantine monuments, as well as a number of Ottoman monuments. Athens is home to two UNESCO World Heritage Sites, the Acropolis of Athens and the medieval Daphni Monastery, Athens was the host city of the first modern-day Olympic Games in 1896, and 108 years later it welcomed home the 2004 Summer Olympics. In Ancient Greek, the name of the city was Ἀθῆναι a plural, in earlier Greek, such as Homeric Greek, the name had been current in the singular form though, as Ἀθήνη. It was possibly rendered in the later on, like those of Θῆβαι and Μυκῆναι. During the medieval period the name of the city was rendered once again in the singular as Ἀθήνα, an etiological myth explaining how Athens has acquired its name was well known among ancient Athenians and even became the theme of the sculpture on the West pediment of the Parthenon. The goddess of wisdom, Athena, and the god of the seas, Poseidon had many disagreements, in an attempt to compel the people, Poseidon created a salt water spring by striking the ground with his trident, symbolizing naval power. However, when Athena created the tree, symbolizing peace and prosperity. Different etymologies, now rejected, were proposed during the 19th century. Christian Lobeck proposed as the root of the name the word ἄθος or ἄνθος meaning flower, ludwig von Döderlein proposed the stem of the verb θάω, stem θη- to denote Athens as having fertile soil. In classical literature, the city was referred to as the City of the Violet Crown, first documented in Pindars ἰοστέφανοι Ἀθᾶναι. In medieval texts, variant names include Setines, Satine, and Astines, today the caption η πρωτεύουσα, the capital, has become somewhat common

44.
Athena
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Athena or Athene, often given the epithet Pallas, is the goddess of wisdom, craft, and war in ancient Greek religion and mythology. Minerva is the Roman goddess identified with Athena, Athena is known for her calm temperament, as she moves slowly to anger. She is noted to have fought for just reasons. Athena is portrayed as a companion of heroes and is the patron goddess of heroic endeavour. She is the patroness of Athens. The Athenians founded the Parthenon on the Acropolis of her city, Athens. Veneration of Athena was so persistent that archaic myths about her were recast to adapt to cultural changes, in her role as a protector of the city, many people throughout the Greek world worshipped Athena as Athena Polias. While the city of Athens and the goddess Athena essentially bear the same name, Athena is associated with Athens, a plural name, because it was the place where she presided over her sisterhood, the Athenai, in earliest times. Mycenae was the city where the Goddess was called Mykene, at Thebes she was called Thebe, and the city again a plural, Thebae. Similarly, at Athens she was called Athena, and the city Athenae, Athena had a special relationship with Athens, as is shown by the etymological connection of the names of the goddess and the city. According to mythical lore, she competed with Poseidon and she won by creating the olive tree, the Athenians would accept her gift and name the city after her. In history, the citizens of Athens built a statue of Athena as a temple to the goddess, which had piercing eyes, a helmet on her head, attired with an aegis or cuirass, and an extremely long spear. It also had a shield with the head of the Gorgon on it. A large snake accompanied her and she held Nike, the goddess of victory, therefore, Mylonas believes that Athena was a Mycenaean creation. On the other hand, Nilsson claims that she was the goddess of the palace who protected the king, a-ta-no-dju-wa-ja is also found in Linear A Minoan, the final part being regarded as the Linear A Minoan equivalent of the Linear B Mycenaean di-u-ja or di-wi-ja. Divine Athena also was a weaver and the deity of crafts, whether her name is attested in Eteocretan or not will have to wait for decipherment of Linear A. Perhaps, however, the name Theonoe may mean she who knows divine things better than others. Thus for Plato her name was to be derived from Greek Ἀθεονόα, Plato also noted that the citizens of Sais in Egypt worshipped a goddess whose Egyptian name was Neith, and which was identified with Athena. Neith was the war goddess and huntress deity of the Egyptians since the ancient Pre-Dynastic period, in addition, ancient Greek myths reported that Athena had visited many mythological places such as Libyas Triton River in North Africa and the Phlegraean plain

45.
Italian Renaissance
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The term Renaissance is in essence a modern one that came into currency in the 19th century, in the work of historians such as Jules Michelet and Jacob Burckhardt. The French word renaissance means Rebirth, and the era is best known for the renewed interest in the culture of classical antiquity after the period that Renaissance humanists labeled the Dark Ages. Though today perhaps best known for Italian Renaissance art and architecture, the period saw major achievements in literature, music, philosophy, Italy became the recognized European leader in all these areas by the late 15th century, and to varying degrees retained this lead until about 1600. This was despite a turbulent and generally disastrous period in Italian politics, the European Renaissance began in Tuscany, and centred in the city of Florence. It later spread to Venice, where the remains of ancient Greek culture were brought together, the Renaissance later had a significant effect on Rome, which was ornamented with some structures in the new allantico mode, then was largely rebuilt by humanist sixteenth-century popes. The Italian Renaissance peaked in the century as foreign invasions plunged the region into the turmoil of the Italian Wars. However, the ideas and ideals of the Renaissance endured and spread into the rest of Europe, setting off the Northern Renaissance, the Italian Renaissance is best known for its cultural achievements. Accounts of Renaissance literature usually begin with Petrarch and his friend, famous vernacular poets of the 15th century include the renaissance epic authors Luigi Pulci, Matteo Maria Boiardo, and Ludovico Ariosto. 15th century writers such as the poet Poliziano and the Platonist philosopher Marsilio Ficino made extensive translations from both Latin and Greek, the same is true for architecture, as practiced by Brunelleschi, Leon Battista Alberti, Andrea Palladio, and Bramante. Their works include Florence Cathedral, St. Peters Basilica in Rome, yet cultural contributions notwithstanding, some present-day historians also see the era as one of the beginning of economic regression for Italy. By the Late Middle Ages, Latium, the heartland of the Roman Empire. Rome was a city of ancient ruins, and the Papal States were loosely administered, and vulnerable to external interference such as that of France, and later Spain. The Papacy was affronted when the Avignon Papacy was created in southern France as a consequence of pressure from King Philip the Fair of France, in the south, Sicily had for some time been under foreign domination, by the Arabs and then the Normans. Sicily had prospered for 150 years during the Emirate of Sicily, in contrast Northern and Central Italy had become far more prosperous, and it has been calculated that the region was among the richest of Europe. The Crusades had built lasting trade links to the Levant, the main trade routes from the east passed through the Byzantine Empire or the Arab lands and onwards to the ports of Genoa, Pisa, and Venice. Luxury goods bought in the Levant, such as spices, dyes, moreover, the inland city-states profited from the rich agricultural land of the Po valley. From France, Germany, and the Low Countries, through the medium of the Champagne fairs, land and river trade routes brought goods such as wool, wheat, and precious metals into the region. The extensive trade that stretched from Egypt to the Baltic generated substantial surpluses that allowed significant investment in mining, thus, while northern Italy was not richer in resources than many other parts of Europe, the level of development, stimulated by trade, allowed it to prosper

Polytheistic reconstructionism
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Polytheistic reconstructionism is an approach to paganism first emerging in the late 1960s to early 1970s, which gathered momentum starting in the 1990s. I wish the Teutonic world would once more think in terms of Thor and Wotan, and I wish the Druidic world would see, honestly, that in the mistletoe is their mystery, and that they themselves are t

List of Neopagan movements
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Neopaganism encompasses a wide range of religious groups and individuals. These may include old occult groups, those that follow a New Age approach, those that try to reconstruct old ethnic religions, for organizations, the founding year is given in brackets. Pre-World War II Neopagan or proto-Neopagan groups, growing out of occultism and/or Romant

1.
Winternights sacrifice at Öskjuhlíð, in Reykjavík.

2.
Neo-druids celebrating at Stonehenge.

Germanic Neopaganism
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Heathenry, also termed Heathenism or Germanic Neopaganism, is a modern Pagan religion. Classified as a new movement, its practitioners model their faith on the pre-Christian belief systems adhered to by the Germanic peoples of Iron Age. To reconstruct these past belief systems, Heathenry uses surviving historical, archaeological, although lacking a

1.
A modern reconstruction of a historical Viking Age pendant worn by North Germanic pagans in the Viking Age— Mjölnir, the hammer of the god Thor —now popularly worn in modern Germanic Neopaganism

2.
Outdoor temporary altar of the Swedish Forn Sed Association.

3.
Icelandic Heathen rite at Sigurblót 2009

4.
Many followers of Germanic Neopaganism venerate the Æsir, deities found in Norse mythology. Here, they are pictured gathered around the body of Baldur. Painting by Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg, 1817

Wheel of the Year
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The Wheel of the Year is an annual cycle of seasonal festivals, observed by many modern Pagans. The festivals celebrated by differing sects of modern Paganism can vary considerably in name, observing the cycle of the seasons has been important to many people, both ancient and modern, and many contemporary Pagan festivals are based to varying degree

1.
Neopagans honoring the dead as part of a Samhain ritual

2.
The Wheel of the Year in the Northern Hemisphere. Pagans in the Southern Hemisphere advance these dates six months to coincide with their own seasons.

3.
Kołomir – the Slavic example of Wheel of the Year indicating seasons of the year. Four-point and eight-point swastika -shaped wheels were more common.

4.
Painted Wheel of the Year from the Museum of Witchcraft, Boscastle.

Cult image
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In the practice of religion, a cult image is a human-made object that is venerated or worshipped for the deity, spirit or daemon that it embodies or represents. Cultus, the outward religious formulas of cult, often centers upon the treatment of cult images, religious images cover a wider range of all types of images made with a religious purpose, s

1.
African Songye Power Figure

2.
Vermilion on a stone is a common form of a Hindu murti

3.
A fanciful reconstruction of Phidias ' Statue of Zeus at Olympia, 1572

4.
A clay Ganesha murti, worshipped during Ganesh Chaturthi festival.

Frey
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Freyr or Frey is one of the most important gods of Norse religion. The name is conjectured to derive from the Proto-Norse *frawjaz, lord, Freyr was associated with sacral kingship, virility and prosperity, with sunshine and fair weather, and was pictured as a phallic fertility god, Freyr is said to bestow peace and pleasure on mortals. Freyr, somet

1.
"Freyr" (1901) by Johannes Gehrts.

2.
Seated on Odin's throne Hliðskjálf, the god Freyr sits in contemplation in an illustration (1908) by Frederic Lawrence

3.
The final battle between Freyr and Surtr, illustration by Lorenz Frølich

4.
A detail from Gotland runestone G 181, in the Swedish Museum of National Antiquities in Stockholm. The three men are interpreted as Odin, Thor, and Freyr.

New religious movement
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NRMs can be novel in origin or part of a wider religion, in which case they are distinct from pre-existing denominations. Some NRMs deal with the challenges posed by the world by embracing individualism whereas others seek tightly knit collective means. Scholars have estimated that NRMs now number in the tens of thousands worldwide, with most of th

1.
International Society for Krishna Consciousness member in Moscow

2.
1893 Parliament of the World's Religions

3.
The Beatles in India with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

4.
Jehovah's Witnesses evangelising from house to house.

Paganism
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Paganism is a term that derives from Latin word pagan, which means nonparticipant, one excluded from a more distinguished, professional group. The term was used in the 4th century, by early Christian community, the term competed with polytheism already in use in Judaism, by Philo in the 1st century. Pagans and paganism was a pejorative for the same

1.
The Venus of Arles, depicting the goddess Venus holding the apple of Hesperides.

2.
Reconstruction of the Parthenon, on the Acropolis of Athens, Greece.

3.
Some megaliths are believed to have religious significance.

4.
Children standing with The Lady of Cornwall in a neopagan ceremony in England.

Europe
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Europe is a continent that comprises the westernmost part of Eurasia. Europe is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, yet the non-oceanic borders of Europe—a concept dating back to classical antiquity—are arbitrary. Europe covers about 10,180,000 square kilometres, or 2% of the Earths surface, politically, Europ

1.
Reconstruction of Herodotus ' world map

3.
A medieval T and O map from 1472 showing the three continents as domains of the sons of Noah — Asia to Sem (Shem), Europe to Iafeth (Japheth), and Africa to Cham (Ham)

4.
Early modern depiction of Europa regina ('Queen Europe') and the mythical Europa of the 8th century BC.

North Africa
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North Africa or Northern Africa is the northernmost region of Africa. The United Nationss definition of Northern Africa is, Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Sudan, Tunisia, the countries of Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, and Libya are often collectively referred to as the Maghreb, which is the Arabic word for sunset. Egypt lies to the northeast and enco

1.
Market of Biskra in Algeria, 1899

2.
Northern Africa (UN subregion)

3.
The kasbah of Aït Benhaddou in Morocco

4.
The first Roman emperor native to North Africa was Septimius Severus, born in Leptis Magna in present-day Libya.

Near East
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The Near East is a geographical term that roughly encompasses Western Asia. Despite having varying definitions within different academic circles, the term was applied to the maximum extent of the Ottoman Empire. The term has fallen into disuse in English and has replaced by the terms Middle East. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United

1.
The Near East as defined as the Ottoman Empire at the beginning of " the eastern question ".

2.
Inhabitants of the Near East, late 19th century

3.
Ottoman Porte, 1767, gateway to trade with the Levant. Painting by Antoine de Favray.

4.
British troops, Crimea, 1855.

Religious text
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Religious texts are texts which religious traditions consider to be central to their religious practice or set of beliefs. It is not possible to create an exhaustive list of religious texts, one of the oldest known religious texts is the Kesh Temple Hymn of Ancient Sumer, a set of inscribed clay tablets which scholars typically date around 2600 BCE

1.
Ancient style of scripture used for the Pāli Canon

2.
The Chinese Diamond Sutra, the oldest known dated printed book in the world, printed in the 9th year of Xiantong Era of the Tang Dynasty, or 868 CE. British Library.

3.
Christian Bible, 1407 handwritten copy

4.
The Bible (left) and Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (right) serve as the pastor of the Christian Science church.

Religious denomination
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A religious denomination is a subgroup within a religion that operates under a common name, tradition, and identity. The term refers to the various Christian denominations and it is also used to describe the four branches of Judaism. Within Islam, it can refer to the branches or sects, as well as their various subdivisions such as sub-sects, school

1.
Major denominations and religions of the world.

Eclecticism
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However, this is often without conventions or rules dictating how or which theories were combined. It can sometimes seem inelegant or lacking in simplicity, and eclectics are sometimes criticized for lack of consistency in their thinking and it is, however, common in many fields of study. For example, most psychologists accept certain aspects of be

1.
Eclecticism in architecture at the intersection of Rákóczi Avenue and the Grand Boulevard in Budapest. The Hungarian capital "is a uniquely unified image of the world".

2.
New York Palace, Budapest, Hungary

3.
Madrid City Council (former Post Head Office) Madrid, Spain

Polytheism
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Polytheism is the worship of or belief in multiple deities, which are usually assembled into a pantheon of gods and goddesses, along with their own religions and rituals. Polytheism is a type of theism, within theism, it contrasts with monotheism, the belief in a singular God, in most cases transcendent. Polytheists do not always worship all the go

1.
Egyptian gods in the Carnegie Museum of Natural History

Animism
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Animism is the worlds oldest religion. Animism teaches that objects, places, and creatures all possess distinctive spiritual qualities, potentially, animism perceives all things—animals, plants, rocks, rivers, weather systems, human handiwork, and perhaps even words—as animate and alive. Animism is the oldest known type of system in the world that

2.
Edward Tylor developed animism as an anthropological theory

3.
Five Ojibwe chiefs in the 19th century; it was anthropological studies of Ojibwe religion that resulted in the development of the "new animism"

Pantheism
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Pantheism is the belief that all reality is identical with divinity, or that everything composes an all-encompassing, immanent god. Pantheists thus do not believe in a personal or anthropomorphic god. The term pantheism was not coined until after Spinozas death, and his work, Ethics, was the major source from which Western pantheism spread. Panthei

1.
The philosophy of Baruch Spinoza is often regarded as pantheism, although he did not use that term.

2.
Albert Einstein is considered to be a pantheist by some commentators.

3.
Levi Ponce 's "Luminaries of Pantheism" in Venice, California for The Paradise Project, "dedicated to celebrating and spreading awareness about pantheism."

Christianity
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Christianity is a Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ, who serves as the focal point for the religion. It is the worlds largest religion, with over 2.4 billion followers, or 33% of the global population, Christians believe that Jesus is the Son of God and the savior of humanity whose coming as the Messiah

1.
An Eastern Christian icon depicting Emperor Constantine and the Fathers of the First Council of Nicaea (325) as holding the Niceno–Constantinopolitan Creed of 381

2.
Various depictions of Jesus

3.
Crucifixion, representing the death of Jesus on the Cross, painting by Diego Velázquez, 17th century

New Age
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The New Age is a term applied to a range of spiritual or religious beliefs and practices that developed in Western nations during the 1970s. Precise scholarly definitions of the New Age differ in their emphasis, although analytically often considered to be religious, those involved in it typically prefer the designation of spiritual and rarely use

1.
A New Age Rainbow Gathering in Bosnia, 2007

2.
Prominent esoteric thinkers who influenced the New Age movement include Helena Blavatsky (left) and Carl Jung (right)

4.
This barrel house was the first dwelling constructed at the Findhorn Ecovillage.

Pagan studies
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In 2004, a peer-reviewed academic journal devoted to the discipline, The Pomegranate, began publication. Many books on the subject have been published by a variety of different academic publishing companies, at the same time, many academics involved in Pagan studies are practicing Pagans themselves, bringing an insiders perspective to their approac

1.
Margot Adler (pictured in 2004) published an early sociological study of Paganism in the United States.

Rodnover
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Slavic neopaganism or the Slavic native faith is the contemporary continuation of the ethnic religion of the Slavic peoples. It is characterised by a pantheist and polytheist theology, a focus on Slavic culture and folklore, in English sources the religion is often called Ridnoviry and its followers Ridnovirs. The term Rodnovery, from Russian, is a

1.
Słoneczko / Kolovrat

2.
A building of the "Slavic Kremlin", a Rodnover cultural compound made of a temple and other buildings in Podolsky District, Moscow Oblast.

3.
Slavs serving their gods, 19th century woodcut.

4.
Mazovian Temple (pl Chram Mazowiecki)of the Native Polish Church.

Abrahamic religion
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Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are the largest Abrahamic religions in terms of numbers of adherents. As of 2005, estimates classified 54% of the population as adherents of an Abrahamic religion, about 32% as adherents of other religions. Christianity claims 33% of the population, Islam has 21%, Judaism has 0. 2%. It has been suggested that the ph

1.
An interpretation of the borders (in red) of the Promised Land, based on God's promise to Abraham.

3.
The tomb of Abraham, a cenotaph above the Cave of the Patriarchs traditionally considered to be the burial place of Abraham.

4.
A Bible handwritten in Latin, on display in Malmesbury Abbey, Wiltshire, England. This Bible was transcribed in Belgium in 1407 for reading aloud in a monastery.

Dharmic religion
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These religions are also classified as Eastern religions. Although Indian religions are connected through the history of India, they constitute a wide range of religious communities, evidence attesting to prehistoric religion in the Indian subcontinent derives from scattered Mesolithic rock paintings. The Harappan people of the Indus Valley Civilis

Wouter Hanegraaff
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Wouter Jacobus Hanegraaff is full professor of History of Hermetic Philosophy and related currents at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. He served as the first President of the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism from 2005 to 2013, Hanegraaff was raised as the son of a theologian. He originally studied classical guitar

1.
Wouter Hanegraaff, 2006

Superstition
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The word superstition is generally used to refer to the religion not practiced by the majority of a given society regardless of whether the prevailing religion contains superstitions. In the classical era, the existence of gods was actively debated both among philosophers and theologians, and opposition to superstition arose consequently, the poem

1.
Clay hamsa on a wall, believed to protect the inhabitants of the house from harm

2.
Some cultures consider black cats to signify good or bad luck

New religious movements
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NRMs can be novel in origin or part of a wider religion, in which case they are distinct from pre-existing denominations. Some NRMs deal with the challenges posed by the world by embracing individualism whereas others seek tightly knit collective means. Scholars have estimated that NRMs now number in the tens of thousands worldwide, with most of th

1.
International Society for Krishna Consciousness member in Moscow

2.
1893 Parliament of the World's Religions

3.
The Beatles in India with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

4.
Jehovah's Witnesses evangelising from house to house.

Nature religion
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A nature religion is a religious movement that believes the natural world is an embodiment of divinity, sacredness or spiritual power. Nature religions include indigenous religions practiced in parts of the world by cultures who consider the environment to be imbued with spirits. It also includes contemporary Pagan faiths such as Wicca, Neo-Druidis

1.
An aukuras, a type of fire altar found in Romuva, a modern Pagan faith characterised as a "nature religion".

Freyr
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Freyr or Frey is one of the most important gods of Norse religion. The name is conjectured to derive from the Proto-Norse *frawjaz, lord, Freyr was associated with sacral kingship, virility and prosperity, with sunshine and fair weather, and was pictured as a phallic fertility god, Freyr is said to bestow peace and pleasure on mortals. Freyr, somet

1.
"Freyr" (1901) by Johannes Gehrts.

2.
Seated on Odin's throne Hliðskjálf, the god Freyr sits in contemplation in an illustration (1908) by Frederic Lawrence

3.
The final battle between Freyr and Surtr, illustration by Lorenz Frølich

4.
A detail from Gotland runestone G 181, in the Swedish Museum of National Antiquities in Stockholm. The three men are interpreted as Odin, Thor, and Freyr.

European Congress of Ethnic Religions
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The first World Pagan Congress was hosted in June 1998 in Vilnius, Lithuania, organized by Jonas Trinkunas, the founder of Romuva, a Lithuanian neopagan organization. The renaming from Pagan to Ethnic was the result of a passionate debate. The congress was held under the name World Congress of Ethnic Religions during 1999 to 2010, the 2006 and 2009

1.
European Congress of Ethnic Religions

Ethnic group
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An ethnic group or ethnicity is a category of people who identify with each other based on similarities, such as common ancestral, language, social, cultural or national experiences. Unlike other social groups, ethnicity is often an inherited status based on the society in which one lives, in some cases, it can be adopted if a person moves into ano

1.
Before the 1970s, the Korowai people of Papua were an uncontacted people. Their population numbers no more than 3,000.

2.
The Assyrians are the indigenous peoples of Northern Iraq.

3.
Some European ethnic groups, such as Basque people, do not constitute a majority in any one country.

Ethnology
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Ethnology is the branch of anthropology that compares and analyzes the characteristics of different peoples and the relationship between them. The term ethnologia is credited to Adam Franz Kollár who used and defined it in his Historiae ivrisqve pvblici Regni Vngariae amoenitates published in Vienna in 1783, the distinction between the three terms

1.
Adam František Kollár, 1779

2.
Claude Lévi-Strauss

3.
A picture of the Izmir Ethnography Museum (İzmir Etnografya Müzesi) from the courtyard.

Slavic languages
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The Slavic languages are the Indo-European languages native to the Slavic peoples, originally from Eastern Europe. The Slavic languages are divided intro three subgroups, East, West, and South, which constitute more than twenty languages. Furthermore, the diasporas of many Slavic peoples have established isolated minorities of speakers of their lan

1.
Baška tablet, 11th century, Krk, Croatia.

2.
Countries where an East Slavic language is the national language

3.
14th-century Novgorodian children were literate enough to send each other letters written on birch bark.

4.
10th–11th century Codex Zographensis, canonical monument of Old Church Slavonic.

Indigenous religions
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Ethnic religion, alongside indigenous religion, is a term used within religious studies to describe various expressions of religion associated with a particular ethnic group. Ethnic religions are often distinguished from religions which claim to not be limited in ethnic or national scope, ethnic religions do not have to be excluded to independent r

1.
Altar to Inari Ōkami at the Fushimi Inari Shrine in Kyoto. Shinto is the ethnic religion of the Japanese people.

2.
The symbol of the Ndut initiation rite in Serer religion.

3.
Indian devotees of Shiva in pilgrimage.

4.
A typical Chinese local-deity temple in Taiwan.

World religion
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The worlds principal religions and spiritual traditions may be classified into a small number of major groups, although this is by no means a uniform practice. This theory began in the 18th century with the goal of recognizing the relative levels of civility in societies, in world cultures, there have traditionally been many different groupings of

1.
An 1821 map of the world, where "Christians, Mahometans, and Pagans" correspond to levels of civilization (The map makes no distinction between Buddhism and Hinduism).

2.
An 1883 map of the world divided into colors representing "Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, Mohammedans and Pagans".

Hinduism
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Hinduism is a religion, or a way of life, found most notably in India and Nepal. Hinduism has been called the oldest religion in the world, and some practitioners and scholars refer to it as Sanātana Dharma, scholars regard Hinduism as a fusion or synthesis of various Indian cultures and traditions, with diverse roots and no founder. This Hindu syn

1.
Swami Vivekananda was a key figure in introducing Vedanta and Yoga in Europe and USA, raising interfaith awareness and making Hinduism a world religion.

3.
The Rigveda is the first and most important Veda and is one of the oldest religious texts. This Rigveda manuscript is in Devanagari.

4.
A wedding is the most extensive personal ritual an adult Hindu undertakes in his or her life. A typical Hindu wedding is solemnized before Vedic fire ritual (shown).

Shinto
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Shinto practices were first recorded and codified in the written historical records of the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki in the 8th century. Still, these earliest Japanese writings do not refer to a unified Shinto religion, practitioners express their diverse beliefs through a standard language and practice, adopting a similar style in dress and ritual, d

1.
Takachiho-gawara. Here is the sacred ground of the descent to earth of Ninigi-no-Mikoto (the grandson of Amaterasu).

1.
Example of Louisiana-Tradition Voodoo altar inside a temple in New Orleans.

Sub-Saharan Africa
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Sub-Saharan Africa is, geographically, the area of the continent of Africa that lies south of the Sahara. According to the UN, it consists of all African countries that are fully or partially located south of the Sahara and it contrasts with North Africa, whose territories are part of the League of Arab states within the Arab world. Somalia, Djibou

1.
Stone chopping tool from Olduvai Gorge.

2.
Dark and lighter green: Definition of "Sub-Saharan Africa" as used in the statistics of UN institutions. Lighter green: However, Sudan is classified as North Africa by United Nations Statistics Division.

3.
Nzinga Mbande, queen of the Bantu Ndongo and Matamba kingdoms.

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Stone city of Gondershe, Somalia.

Indigenous peoples
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Groups are usually described as indigenous when they maintain traditions or other aspects of an early culture that is associated with a given region. Not all indigenous peoples share such characteristics, Indigenous societies are found in every inhabited climate zone and continent of the world. Estimates put the population of indigenous peoples fro

1.
Indigenous Australian boys and men in front of a bush shelter, Groote Eylandt, circa 1933

Colonialism
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Colonialism is the establishment of a colony in one territory by a political power from another territory, and the subsequent maintenance, expansion, and exploitation of that colony. The term is used to describe a set of unequal relationships between the colonial power and the colony and often between the colonists and the indigenous peoples. The E

1.
The pith helmet, an icon of colonialism in tropical lands. Here, one in use in the Second French Colonial Empire.

2.
1541 founding of Santiago de Chile

3.
Dutch family in Java, 1927

4.
Colonial Governor of the Seychelles inspecting police guard of honour in 1972

Animal sacrifice
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Animal sacrifice is the ritual killing and offering of an animal to appease or maintain favour with a deity. Such forms of sacrifice are practised within many religions around the world, all or only part of a sacrificial animal may be offered, especially in the context of ritual slaughter. Animal sacrifices were common throughout Europe and the Anc

1.
Sacrifice of a young boar in ancient Greece (tondo from an Attic red-figure cup, 510–500 BC, by the Epidromos Painter, collections of the Louvre)

2.
Preparation of an animal sacrifice; marble, fragment of an architectural relief, first quarter of the 2nd century AD; from Rome, Italy

3.
Matagh of a rooster at the entrance of a monastery church (Alaverdi, Armenia, 2009), with inset of bloody steps.

4.
A water buffalo about to be sacrificed by a villager in the Durga Puja festival

Ronald Hutton
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Ronald Hutton is an English historian who specialises in the study of Early Modern Britain, British folklore, pre-Christian religion and contemporary Paganism. A professor in the subject at the University of Bristol, Hutton has published fourteen books and has appeared on British television and he has held a fellowship at Magdalen College, Oxford a

1.
Key concepts

Parthenon
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The Parthenon is a former temple, on the Athenian Acropolis, Greece, dedicated to the goddess Athena, whom the people of Athens considered their patron. Construction began in 447 BC when the Athenian Empire was at the peak of its power and it was completed in 438 BC although decoration of the building continued until 432 BC. It is the most importan

1.
The Parthenon

2.
Detail of the West metopes, illustrating the current condition of the temple in detail after 2,500 years of war, pollution, erratic conservation, pillage and vandalism

3.
Phidias Showing the Frieze of the Parthenon to his Friends, 1868 painting by Lawrence Alma-Tadema

4.
Part of the east pediment still found on the Parthenon

Athens
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Athens is the capital and largest city of Greece. In modern times, Athens is a cosmopolitan metropolis and central to economic, financial, industrial, maritime. In 2015, Athens was ranked the worlds 29th richest city by purchasing power, Athens is recognised as a global city because of its location and its importance in shipping, finance, commerce,

3.
Acropolis of Athens, with Odeon of Herodes Atticus seen on bottom left

Athena
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Athena or Athene, often given the epithet Pallas, is the goddess of wisdom, craft, and war in ancient Greek religion and mythology. Minerva is the Roman goddess identified with Athena, Athena is known for her calm temperament, as she moves slowly to anger. She is noted to have fought for just reasons. Athena is portrayed as a companion of heroes an

1.
Mattei Athena at Louvre. Roman copy from the 1st century BC/AD after a Greek original of the 4th century BC, attributed to Cephisodotos or Euphranor.

2.
Athenian tetradrachm representing the goddess Athena.

3.
A new peplos was woven for Athena and ceremonially brought to dress her cult image (British Museum).

Italian Renaissance
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The term Renaissance is in essence a modern one that came into currency in the 19th century, in the work of historians such as Jules Michelet and Jacob Burckhardt. The French word renaissance means Rebirth, and the era is best known for the renewed interest in the culture of classical antiquity after the period that Renaissance humanists labeled th

1.
Renaissance

2.
Pandolfo Malatesta (1417–1468), lord of Rimini, by Piero della Francesca. Malatesta was a capable condottiere, following the tradition of his family. He was hired by the Venetians to fight against the Turks (unsuccessfully) in 1465, and was patron of Leone Battista Alberti, whose Tempio Malatestiano at Rimini is one of the first entirely classical buildings of the Renaissance.

3.
Leonardo da Vinci, Italian Renaissance Man

4.
Giulio Clovio, Adoration of the Magi and Solomon Adored by the Queen of Sheba from the Farnese Hours, 1546.

1.
Beginning in 1821, the Greek War of Independence began as a rebellion by Greek nationalists against the ruling Ottoman Empire.

2.
The growth of a national identity was expressed in a variety of symbolic ways, including the adoption of a national flag. Pictured, a Scottish Union Flag in the 1704 edition of The Present State of the Universe.

3.
Nationalist and liberal pressure led to the European revolutions of 1848

1.
A modern reconstruction of a historical Viking Age pendant worn by North Germanic pagans in the Viking Age— Mjölnir, the hammer of the god Thor —now popularly worn in modern Germanic Neopaganism

2.
Outdoor temporary altar of the Swedish Forn Sed Association.

3.
Icelandic Heathen rite at Sigurblót 2009

4.
Many followers of Germanic Neopaganism venerate the Æsir, deities found in Norse mythology. Here, they are pictured gathered around the body of Baldur. Painting by Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg, 1817

1.
Imaginative illustration of 'An Arch Druid in His Judicial Habit', from "The Costume of the Original Inhabitants of the British Islands" by S.R. Meyrick and C.H. Smith (1815), the gold gorget collar copying Irish Bronze Age examples.

2.
"Two Druids", 19th-century engraving based on a 1719 illustration by Bernard de Montfaucon.

3.
An 18th century illustration of a wicker man, the form of execution that Caesar alleged the Druids used for human sacrifice. From the "Duncan Caesar", Tonson, Draper, and Dodsley edition of the Commentaries of Caesar translated by William Duncan published in 1753.

4.
Druids Inciting the Britons to Oppose the Landing of the Romans – from Cassell's History of England, Vol. I – anonymous author and artists

2.
The earliest known depiction of a Siberian shaman, produced by the Dutch explorer Nicolaes Witsen, who authored an account of his travels among Samoyedic- and Tungusic-speaking peoples in 1692. Witsen labelled the illustration as a "Priest of the Devil" and gave this figure clawed feet to highlight what Witsen perceived as demonic qualities.

3.
Russian postcard based on a photo taken in 1908 by S.I. Borisov, showing a female shaman, of probable Khakas ethnicity.